In my continuing attempts to keep from killing the people around me, I’m trying another way to blot out the noise around me.
At the Apple Store before Christmas, I tried out the Bose noise cancelling headphones. Just like their aviation headphones, they were awesome, light, and way too freaking expensive . They’re around $300, which I suppose is a bargain compared to the Series X aviation headphones which are around $1000, and have been since they invented the concept of ANR (Automatic Noise Reduction) in aviation headphones. The aviation ones haven’t budged in price in 10 years, so I don’t expect to see the music ones getting drastically reduced either.
So I compromised and bought myself a pair of Sony MDR-NC6 headphones. These are semi-open like the original Walkman headphones, but with a battery compartment in the bow just above the right ear.
You put them on your head and flick the switch. The first thing you notice is that you can no longer hear the air noise in the overhead HVAC system, nor the three computers sitting right behind your head on the desk behind you. Then you turn on the iPod and find you can use a much lower volume setting. Not sure if that’s because everything got quieter, or because the iPod got louder. Even near-by conversations are muted. Hey, I don’t feel like punching the guy using his speaker phone to check his voice mail. Much. This is good! And no sore ear canal from ear buds that don’t fit very well.
There are a couple of downsides, though:
- I don’t think the bass response is very good.
- The battery compartment presses into my head annoyingly after a lot of hours of continuous use.
- I don’t know how long the battery lasts yet – that might be an issue.
- When you’re walking around, if you don’t turn off the noise cancelling you get a very loud wind noise in your ears. I have no idea why.