(light music) (birds quacking) (ringing echoes) - Such a familiar sound for hunters, the ringing ears after shots fired.

Most hunters brush it off and don't think much of it despite the irreversible damage being done and the fact that preventing it is so simple.

Today we're learning about a Minnesota company that specializes in just that, Alclair.

(light upbeat music) Well, we're here at Alclair in Osseo, Minnesota.

You do everything right here, right?

- Everything.

- Explain what all is taking place in this building.

- Yep.

So in this building is where we manufacture all of our products.

And everything that we make is pretty much handmade and it's all done by the people you'll meet back there.

And we do everything from start to finish.

So everything comes in as raw materials and it comes out as a finished product for your ears.

- Well, can we take a look around?

- Absolutely, let's do it.

- All right, let's do it.

- [Speaker] I don't normally do this, but- - Alclair is a company that is focused on protecting people's hearing and helping them experience life in whatever way that they are through hearing.

So we make products for the music world.

So we make products for musicians that use 'em on stage to hear so they can perform.

We make products for hearing protection, for hunting, industrial, broadcast, different areas where you're around loud noise.

(upbeat music) This first part is where we actually do all the wiring, all the electronic components that we make come in as raw products.

And so in here they're taking those raw products and hand wiring them and building the face plates and all the electronics for hearing protection as well as all the acoustics for our custom in-ear monitors.

- [Bret] So this is what will go inside.

- This is what will go inside, yep.

- What fits in your ear then, essentially.

- Yep.

So this is the first, this is where everything starts when you place an order, is we hand build the internal electronics of your product here.

And that is kind of cool 'cause it makes us a little bit different.

Some, a few manufacture their own, most don't manufacture their own, they just have someone like us manufacture their products for 'em.

So it makes it great for repairs and in customer service because if you're sending it back in, you're sending it in to where it was made.

And so we then have all the abilities to repair it right there.

So in this instance, we're just trying to match that product to a frequency sweep that we have that's virtual.

- Oh, okay.

- Yep.

So this is just testing things before they go into the products from the very beginning.

- And that way you can make sure you're hearing everything you're supposed to be hearing.

- Yep.

Yep.

(upbeat music) So this is our 3D lab.

So this is where we actually take the physical impression that's made of your ear and we virtually turn that impression into your custom product shell.

So this is sort of the magic that goes on in the background to make the product fit you much more comfortably.

I mean, we'll send in their impressions.

So they'll go to an audiologist or a hearing aid professional and they'll get their impression done of their ear.

And then that impression, we scan it in a digital scanner.

And then where Zeshawn is, he's taking that digital impression and he's now turning that into a virtual mockup of your ear in a shell form.

So we don't need all of what the impression gathers, but we need a big part of it.

So then we can make something that fits comfortably in your ear and stays in your ear and protects your hearing.

So once he's done designing them, then they'll get sent to this bank of 3D printers over here that use just all different colors.

And so whatever color you chose for your shell, then we'll send it over here and we'll print that shell to match that color.

(upbeat music) So here's where we actually will router out the product, we'll detail it by hand, and then it'll come where Jen and Brandon are and they will take that product and they're going to detail it down into a finished product that looks beautiful.

And if there's any imperfections, they will drill it out and fix the imperfection and make a finished product out of it.

(upbeat music continues) And Will will take that product and he'll give it that final test I was telling you about where he's taking that product and running it through that same frequency sweep, but now it's the full sweep and he's gotta make sure that right matches left and everything is right and everything is correct the way you chose it as a product.

- [Bret] So what's going on here?

- So this is where if you have chosen to have artwork on your product, this is where Jasmine is gonna take whatever artwork you've given us and she will format it to fit on your ear and then she's gonna use this printer to actually print on the ear, whatever it is that you want.

It's kind of a cool feature.

- [Bret] So people can get designs, names, whatever on there?

- Yep.

If you can imagine it, we can print it right on there.

(soft music) When everything is finished, it'll come where Carissa is and she'll package it up and ship it out to you wherever you are.

- [Bret] Well, that seems pretty easy.

- It's a piece of cake.

Let's do it all day long.

My wife and I just, we just have a heart for serving others.

You know, it wasn't really about the products more, it was like how does this help you and serve you in whatever vocation or entertainment or whatever you're doing.

And so we were just led then start ourselves Alclair and that launched us into that world and then into the hearing world.

This is actually where we manufacture the silicone that goes into our custom hearing protection and musician plugs, impact products.

This does make us a little unusual because we're actually, we're very vertical in this area.

This is what I started doing years and years ago was polymer chemistry, designing, and compounding silicones to make products for the hearing industry.

And we make the products here and we use 'em for our own purposes, but we also ship 'em to distributors and audiologists all over the world.

- So you're not outsourcing anything really.

You're doing it all right here.

- Yeah, we're doing it all right here.

So the hearing protection that you get is like the silicone hearing protection that you get is literally formulated, compounded, 3D imaged, and then made to fit your ear right here in the factory.

- [Bret] In the same building, Marc's brother Rick does hearing tests and helps people recognize and treat hearing loss.

I wanted to see how my hearing has held up after a lifetime of hunting and shooting.

- It's important to get a screening regularly because you know, we think about our eyes and teeth and getting those appointments on an annual basis, but our hearing for some reason gets left by the wayside.

So it's important to probably get a hearing screening, you know, if there's no obvious signs, at least every couple years, just to kind of get a baseline established and to kind of follow it as it progresses over the years.

- Well, I've definitely tried to be diligent about protecting my hearing, particularly when it comes to being out there hunting or shooting.

But I'm curious to see what kind of damage I've done.

- Yes.

- Can I jump in the booth?

- You can jump in the booth.

I'm going to put some inserts in your ear to start with.

So this just goes around your neck and then these little inserts go in your ears.

So the first thing we do in a hearing test is kind of what we were just talking about.

We are trying to establish when you hear a tone in your ear at different frequencies.

And so I'm gonna give you a pulsating tone, kind of like a beep beep beep off in the distance there, it might be a high pitch tone or a low pitch tone.

It even might be louder or softer.

All that is not as important as what we're trying to determine, and that's the softest level you hear that tone.

So all I want you to do is listen for the tone and when you hear it, however you hear it, even if you very faintly hear it, I just want you to let me know.

Just say, now we're okay, raise a hand, do whatever you wanna do so just acknowledge you're hearing it.

Then it will go away and then it'll come back and each time you hear it, you just let me know.

So we'll start in your right ear.

(upbeat music) So that's a basic pure tone hearing test just to determine when you hear tones of different frequencies.

And it gives us an idea of how you compare to a normal status, kinda like a vision test being 20/20, we do a hearing test that same way.

Now additionally, once we would, you know, find and indicated some loss of hearing, in other words, some degree of hearing loss, there's some additional testing we would do.

Basically, you know, in terms of identification, red is right and blue is left and the circles and x's and this chart is just represented a volume going down in frequency going across.

So lower tones to higher tones might say base to treble, or in speech, a lot of times it's vowels to consonants.

And so then we kind of measure hearing loss against normal.

And actually, kinda like your eyes, 20/20, 20 decibels across the board is considered in the normal range.

So now we've got an interesting look at here.

So your right ear you can see is perfectly in the normal range right throughout the frequency range.

So you've got excellent hearing in that right ear.

The left ear, interestingly enough, is perfectly normal out here to about, oh, 1,500 hertz, 2,000 hertz is still good, but for some reason, and it's probably in effect of something that has happened in that left ear, and it very easily could be and probably is some level of loud sound exposure over, and sometimes it depends on right-hand or left-handed shooting.

- 100% right-handed shooting, my left ear takes a lot of the sounds.

- So you've got this little divot here in the left ear where you've got the kind of like similar to yours.

I mean, you got that same little divot at 4K.

So at 3,000 hertz, 4,000 hertz, you kind of start coming back up in the six and 8,000 hertz range.

But you have this little divot in that left ear.

So you do have the beginnings of a little hearing loss in that left ear.

- [Bret] And hearing loss might lead to bigger issues than not hearing your buddies give you a hard time after a miss.

- There's been a lot of studies lately that have found that some, they're finding that dementia has a correlation with hearing loss because what's in, you know, like I always say, when you see, right, you know you're around people, you know there's something going on, but if you can't hear, then you're really not part of that group of people because you're not engaging with the conversation.

You don't hear the mood, you don't experience what they're laughing at and all these things.

And so you sort of get into a shell.

They're finding that hearing instruments, if people start using them earlier in life, when they find out they've got a hearing loss, if they start using them earlier in life, it could put off some dementia that could be coming your way.

And a lot of people, you know, spend thousands of dollars on hearing instruments.

I mean, if you think hearing protection is expensive, wait till you have to buy a hearing instrument, you know, and that's what's kind of cool about the hearing, you know, the active hearing protection because it's giving you that, then it stops during the shot, it shuts down and protects you and then turns on instantly so you can hear all of those things.

And so the joy and the satisfaction and the happiness of being there is amplified, I guess you'd say, you know, back to what it should be, you know, being in a duck line and hearing everybody talk or ribbing each other or you know, nice shot, Bret, that's what it's all about, you know?

It's kind of what happens before and after the shot.

We just get these things in our mind where these loud noises are not gonna harm us because it is, it isn't just something that is right in your face up front, you know, you don't see it until later on.

So yeah, I think a lot of people just don't consider it, but every time that you have these loud impact sounds, whether it is a gun or an impact wrench or any industrial product being manufactured or anything like that, if you're unprotected, you're damaging your hearing.

And we had always made like hearing protection for friends, family, employees, whatever, because it was part of what we do.

And we had made 'em for ourselves, but we just never were ready to sell them.

And part of that was always like, they're just too darn expensive.

Like they're just, they're expensive, they're expensive to manufacture so they're expensive to buy.

And so we worked with another company that makes a filter that was used in our musician plugs.

So musicians wear, if they're not wearing monitors, they're wearing a music filtered hearing protection that allows the overall SPL levels where they are to come down, but yet they can hear relatively flat rather than if you put your finger in your ear, all the high frequencies go down, and they create a product that actually has like a filter on top of that that will close when there's a loud impact sound.

And so that's built into a silicone earplug.

So now you can hear, if you have normal hearing, you can still hear through that.

And then when there is a gun blast, it shuts off, and they are the coolest thing and they're much, much cheaper than an active product.

The coolest thing is hearing from someone who says like, "Man, I haven't heard a pheasant cackle in years."

And they didn't realize they hadn't heard a pheasant cackle, you know, they did when, you know, they always have been cackling, but at some point in their lives that cackling just faded away and now all of a sudden it's back and what a joy that is.

It's all of a sudden, like something's back, you know, they're like children again and they have a smile on their face and a little twinkle in their eye when they talk about it.

And it just, that's what makes us get up every day and do what we do.

(upbeat music)