Kind of OT: Recommend me some decent but cheap noise-cancelling headphones

[Olorin]

Subject says it all -- any opinions on what you think is worthwhile or what shouldn't be touched with a ten foot pole are appreciated.

[sunnysal]

well...I prefer noise isolation headphones to noise cancelling headphones. I do not like the idea that reverse phase noise is being pumped into my head to lower the preceived noise level, especially if you like to listen loud, it gives me pause.

So...I prefer the "in the ear" phones sold by Shure, Koss, Etymotic and now Sony. they block out outside noise very well and sound great IMHO. Which to use depends on your budget, how much do you want to spend? they run from $50 up to about $500.

you could also consider good traditional isolation phones like used in studios, sealed phones from sennhieser, Beyer and Koss can really keep out room sound.

let us know your budget to recommend something appropriate.

tony

[Olorin]

Sorry, a budget note should always be part of a request like this. These are just for work, so $50-75 is about all I can justify for them.

[marksdad]

you guys should go to headroom .com, they have a nice selection of the cans in question, plus they tell of potential hazards to a persons hearing using noise cancelling can

[sunnysal]

that is just below entry level for the etymotic and shure in ear phones, but I have heard the Sony MDR-EX71SL phones, they are like $35 and they isoalte very well and sound pretty darn good, I also liked the Koss "plug" $17 LOL! but niether of these is truely going to contend with high-end systems.

what use will you put them to? traveling by air or bus? exercising? hooked up to portable electronics or at home hooked up to a "real" system?

In the end I have not heard any active noise cancelling phones that sound as good as mid-fi IMHO, however the good isolation phones from etymotic and shure sound REALLY GOOD, as good or better than most peoples hi fi systems. The below $90 in the ear group sound good but not high-end.

check out full size, over the ear, sealed phones from sennheiser (the HD-280 pro, you should be able to get them for about $75 if you shop around), they sounded great to me and reduced outside sound A LOT, competed well with my much more expensive phones from grado.

lastly, it is good advice to check out the various headphone nut websites around, they all give good advice and many people chime in on their experiecnes with a wide variety of phones.

warm regards,

tony

EDIT: I almost forgot a cult favorite the Sony D66 "eggos" great sealing headphones with an amazingly good frequency response. Hard to find though.

[boomer9911]

AKG or Sennheiser, both German made. I have used both, and as an actual Senheiser fan switched to AKG and couldn't be happier for the $ value and quality...no big bucks required..

[DrWho]

You might want to look into a pair of the Sony - MDR lineup (The more recent models will cost you up to $100 new, but older or used ones will go for cheaper). The Sony's tend to be a little bass heavy (not boomy, just heavy), but for a work scenario this can be a good thing; especially if you like listening and quieter volumes (which you should be doing).

A couple of years ago I had a job at an audit center keying in a bunch of crap into the computer and it got boring, but when i decided to bring in some headphones for listening, work started to get rather interesting. I started off with some of the in-ear models and no matter what I tried, they always started to hurt my ears after an hour or so (if not sooner). The in-ears also induced a lot of listening fatigue and had no lows and you could hear everything else in the room. I then moved onto bigger headphones and started off with the Sony pair. I was totally satisfied and the closed ear was very good at blocking out the sounds in the room. I like to use the Sony's for live mixing because they do a good job of isolating you from the sound coming off stage which makes solo'ing a channel a more useful process. Anyways, I also have access to a few studios and they've all got their lineup of headphones and I borrowed them all to compare the differences between them all (I'm just curious like that). I tried a bunch of AKG headphones which I find provide the most natural sound of them all, but they require a lot of gain to get good volumes and they don't isolate you from outside noise at all. This resulted in a very high noise floor (especially considering the crap loads of hiss that come out of computer headphone jacks). The sennheisers were ok, less exagerated in the bass...almost a more warmer sound, but the effect wore off and they just didn't sound good (probably more of a source problem than a problem with the headphones). Again, sound isolation sucked. So basically I ended up with Sony and sorry for the crap long story. I just didn't know how to convey it well enough.

Anyways, I have also tried a series of active noise cancelling headphones and if you're looking for serious noise reduction, then these are the way to go. To be honest, the Bose has the by far best sounding headphone in this category. They do small speakers well, lol. The other 3 brands I tried all were fatiguing after a while and sometimes had some wierd effects (you'd have to hear it cuz it can't be described). However, I don't remember any of the brands, but I can probably find out if you wanted me to (I remember what they looked like).

Now if you want the ultimate in noise reduction without any active phase crap, you should purchase the cheapest pair of nice headphones you can afford and then purchase a corresponding pair of hunting ear protection. Then with a little effort, you remove the drivers from the headphones and stuff them inside the hunting headgear thing. I came across the idea when trying to do some recordings with this really insanely awesome drummer dude. He was very sensitive about retaining his hearing and hated to have headphones blasting in his ears so that he could hear over his drumset. The bass player in the band happened to have a spare set of headphones laying around and they went to town to build this thing. It took them a while to find a pair of hunting protection things (dang it, what the heck is the term for them?) that were the perfect size for mounting the driver. The end result was a headphone with a 60dB reduction in sound (or watever those hunting things claim).