NOISE CANCELING HEADPHONES
You can drown out the real world in several ways, but one of those is best left between you and your bartender. We're talking about headphones, and here are the big 3:
1- Get regular headphones and crank them up till everything else goes away. Trouble is, after some time, so will your hearing. Not good.
2- Get In-Ear-Monitors (IEMs) as they can cancel ambient noise better than anything out there...how much better? The best are rated with more noise stopping power than the foam earplugs I use when I shoot. (And I researched and researched to find the best protection I could find.)
3- Get NOISE-CANCELING headphones. Learn to say, "Yes Dear" every now and then, while you listen. But seriously, these do work. Here's how: inside the headset are tiny microphones that pick up the noise around you, amplify, flip it out of phase 180 degrees (and combine with the music if you are listening to), plus the in-phase sound. The net result is the two phases (opposites)cancel each other out. Spooky!
Let me tell you a story.
When I was in college, a friend and I ran dances and provided sound systems for them. We decided to try to build the mother of all bass speakers, and to do that, bought, not one, but TWO of the biggest baddest woofer speakers on the market. Just to make sure it worked, before we put it in the cabinet, we hooked one to a powerful amplifier. It whimped out like a tiny transistor radio speaker. Back to the store. Hey - why...? And the man patiently explained that the rear wave (when the speaker cone moved backwards) was canceling the front wave generated by the same. You need a baffle or enclosure to prevent that.) Oh. He then gave us the "so you're in college and studying electrical engineering?" look that withered our psyches. But, armed with this new knowledge we mounted the speakers in the huge cabinet we built, and fired it up. The big box was on casters because it weighed too much to lift. This was... THE MOTHER OF ALLLLL BASS SPEAKERS after all. And when we fired it up there was a lot of bass and a screeching noise. We dared to move closer to investigate. Holy Bass, Batman, it was actually rolling across the concrete as we heard the wheels scrape. The bass was propelling the speaker across the driveway!!! Lesson learned. IN phase, good. OUT of phase, bad.
Years later my wife gave me a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones so I might sleep on all long uncomfortable flights... and darn if they don't reduce the jet noise to a distant whoosh. Now I won't travel without them. I also learned firsthand that they don't work as well as they could, and so I wear earplugs under them so I don't hear the baby cry or the very LOUD AUNT BEE on Prozac gabbing her way for hours WITHOUT STOPPING TO BREATHE.
Noise-canceling technology can achieve about a 10dB drop in a limited frequency range region of the noise you hear from the environment. In other words you get a limited reduction in outside noise. Where the Bose goes wrong beyond that is the ear seal isn't tight enough to really cancel the lowest rumble of the jet engine. If you have a pair, try pushing tighter against your head and hear the difference! Fortunately, the human ear is less sensitive to bass. Unfortunately, the system can't react quickly enough to voice. Good on rumble to a point.
By comparison, a traditional full-sized sealed headphone will provide roughly 10dB of isolation over a much wider frequency range. IEMs typically provide over 20dB of isolation from ambient noise.
Below we discuss the noise canceling nature of these headphones. The more expensive ones are likely to sound better for music reproduction (possibly not the Bose - see if you can listen before you buy.) And to clarify - you can use any of these as regular headphones with the sound cancellation circuit turned OFF or ON.
This is smaller than you are picturing, a plus for convenience. Best of all, it offers 15 - 25 dB of steady state noise cancellation (from about 500 Hz and below). The PXC250 comes with the NoiseGard cancellation device attached to the headphone in a separate small on-cord box a la Bose. It has an on/off switch and runs on 2 AAA batteries. The headphones fold down and fit neatly into a carrying pouch. They are terminated to a mini and come with the 1/4" adapter. An airline adapter is also supplied with the headphone. About half the cost of the Bose.
At $200. The Sennheiser PXC 300Most folks seem to like this one for the lower cost than the Bose, The PXC description also applies to this. Some say the Bose doesn't sound as good with music.
They fold, which is much better than the originals. Since many folks use them while traveling, it only makes sense to be able to not take up much space. I wish I could point out the puffery in their description, but I'd probably get sued. Bose is the master of marketing. Give them that. Some people say they sound great for music, others say they sound overly bassy with less than stellar highs.
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