Alpine MotoSafe Tour and Race
Alpine Hearing Protection is founded 1994 in Netherlands as a producer of customized earplugs for professional applications. They claim their motorcyclists earplugs are the best for the motorway and racing circuit. Their earplugs have special filter which reduces wind noise while keeping the sound or the engine and helmet communicator.
Their main products are MotoSafe Tour (with black filter) and Race (with red filter) which provide 17dB and 20dB noise reduction respectively. MotoSafePro that you can see on the pictures is actually a set of both of these earplugs with included carrying bag, insertion stick and cleaning spray. Further, Alpine sponsors MotoGP so they have a special edition of MotoSafe Race with MotoGP branding (black earplugs with red filter).
Tour earplugs work well at a lower noise levels like in the city environment or at lower speeds. At higher speeds wind noise becomes significant. On the other hand, Race version has higher noise reduction and it is more suitable for motorways, highways and circuits. After testing both of them I have to admit that I prefer Race version and would not buy Tour anymore. Tour is probably good just if you ride a scooter or smaller motorcycle with speeds up to 80km/h. But both versions reduces some level of noise while allowing to hear your communicator, engine, horns and other sounds that should not be removed or attenuated. Of course, they don’t reduce the wind noise completely, if you drive very fast the noise will be there, but specially with the Race version it’s going to be reduced significantly. Alpine recommends to insert the earplugs using the provided stick but still I find insertion a little bit difficult and sometimes you have to try several times before the earplug is positioned correctly and not falling out.
Quies Specific Moto
Quies is a French family company founded in 1921 and they specialize in hearing protection. Instead of providing a keyring pouch, they provide a plastic carrying box.
Quies Specific Moto earplugs provide noise reduction of 22dB which is comparable to Alpine MotoSafe Race. Actually it is a little bit higher noise reduction than Alpines but while wearing them I would say they are similar. It is really difficult to compare precisely but Quies can just do better reduction for sure or in the worse case similar.
Besides that, they are a little bit curved so they sit better in the ears and won’t fall out that easy as Alpines. Quies also uses a special noise filter in the middle of the earplugs which filters out just wind noise while keeping useful sounds still present.
Conclusion
I could use my communicator pretty normally using any of these earplugs and all of them fit nicely in ears and could be wore for several hours. Alpine MotoSafe Tour doesn’t provide enough noise reduction for my taste and I would eliminate it first. Comparing Alpine MotoSafe Race and Quies Specific Moto, I can say that it is much easier to insert Quies and they also might have better noise reduction so I think the conclusion is clear. Since all these earplugs are similarly priced my obvious choice is Quies Moto Specific. If I couldn’t get them for some reason, Alpine MotoSafe Race is acceptable replacement.