iamii

Hey,

I am looking for advice into buying a pair of noise cancelling headphones. I take a lot of plane trips and I think they will be used to their potential. Anyway I looked at the Bose QC2 but I am not will to spend that much money. I have seen other NC Headphones for less than 100. My budget is around 150 dollars. Anybody here have any experience with noise cancelling headphones, and if so what would you recommend?

-Thanks

brandon11983

Ditch the noise cancelling idea. They have a tendency to sound muffled and plain crummy. This is due to the background "silence" being introduced back into the headphone to cancel out the noise around you. Look into a good pair of sealed headphones. My pair of Sennheiser HD-280pro's have 32 dB of ambient noise attenuation. They block out the vast majority of the noise around you. My friend Adam is actually borrowing them right now for a plane trip to NY.

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skaven

My dad just got a set of Bose NC headphones for use in his airplane (he's a pilot). Compared to even the high-end sealed headphones, it's night and day. I highly recommend that you at least try a pair out. While a sealed headphone will certainly cut down the ambient noise, it doesn't really remove it. The NC stuff in my dad's headset makes it like you're sitting in a quiet room with a slight hiss around you. You can't even hear the engine running. Definitely cool stuff.

maleficent

I fly pretty much every other week -- last week I borrowed a colleagues Bose NC headphones and I now must get a set for myself. the hiss is a little annoying for about 6 seconds, the total silence is amazing...

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DJMala

A friend of mine bought a pair of the knockoff NC headphones, I think they were from Koss. He mostly liked them, but found that if you move around too much with them on, you can actually rattle the microphones in them that do the noise cancellation and cause rather unpleasant pops. I don't know if the better quality brands have the same problem.

Is that such a good idea when you're flying a plane?

Cedak

The main problem with the Bose QC2s, infact all Bose products, is that they charge about three or four times as much as they should. The Bose Triports just don't compare to headphones a third of their price, both in sound quality and in build quality. Oh, the power of marketing.

If you are comfortable with sticking stuff in your ears you might look into isolating canalphones like the Sure E2c and E3c or the Etymotic line. They're like earplugs with little speakers in them. Like earbuds but they go into your ear canals...block out a lot of noise.

iamii

Hm, thanks for all the advice, I am still looking around and will definetly let you guys know what I go with.

theman0707

you might want to try looking at a pair of canal phones for noise isolation. check out www.etymotic.com or www.shure.com for some of there products. i have a pair of the etymotic er6i and they are incredible with sound isolation when you get a good seal. on my way home from work i listen to them out of my ipod while my brother drives with the radio up and i cant hear any of it. they are pretty good sound quality also right out of the ipod. you can definately get better than the er6i. a word to the wise though, do not fall asleep with them on. i did that once and slept 2 hours late while my alarm was blairing.

-chris