Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I go to a lot of shows and have started to get concerned about hearing damage. I've tried traditional foam ear plugs, and the sound ends up muffled and I can't really enjoy it at all. Did some research, found a few convincing articles that recommended the Isolate Pro's as a recommendation for a high end earplug that will sound amazing due to "bone conduction" and won't sound muffled at all. This is a $50+ pair of earplugs. I ordered them. At the same time, I saw a daily deal for some Hearos High Fidelity earplugs for like $8. I decided to get them as well so I could side by side compare at a rock show. The Isolate Pro's look very nice. I put them in, and immediately felt like I was missing something. It sounds just like any other foam earplugs I've used in the past. I looked up directions, am confident that I did everything correctly... but they're junk. I switched over to the Hearos earplugs, and it was like a night and day difference. To be fair, I wasn't really happy with how the Hearos earplugs sounded either -- but, when switching back and forth in a live setting, it was a dramatic difference. The Isolate Pro's were terrible. After this experience I went on a binge and bought several other pairs of earplugs: - Vibes (As Seen On Shark Tank) - Downbeats - Dubs - Etymotic ER20XS - Earasers - Crescendo Music Ear Plugs (these are actually literally the exact same as the Macks 16 but cost way more) - Macks 16 I've taken these all to concerts and swapped them out to compare. Downbeats win for comfort, but for how things actually sound they weren't at the top. Several of them sound very similar -- Vibes, Downbeats, Dubs, Crescendo, Macks 16. The difference between many of them is negligable... but the ones that stood out that sounded better than the pack were the Earasers and the Etymotic ER20XS. Earasers gets the nod for being more comfortable. Anyway -- may have gone slightly off topic but the moral of the story is that I ended up going down this rabbit hole because the Isolate Pro's, which I started with, seem like a total scam or I've totally messed something up when using them. I wish they worked for me, but they don't.