Thomas recently won these Bose noise canceling headphones at a conference.
I’d been thinking about getting some high-end listening devices (ie: buds, headphones, in-ears…) because many of the environments I work in are quite noisy and rarely require me to hear anything other than a boot-up beep or my cellphone ringing… and the EMP effect of that is apparent in many other ways anyway 😉
After a useless experiment on Friday when the battery died, I’m trying them out again today in a ‘data center mit desk’. And I have a handful of spare batteries… no idea how long they last.
At first, the noise cancellation don’t seem to do much; I put the cans on my ears then turned them on, ambient noise dropped somewhat, but probably not as much as the actual cans were dampening anyway. Start the iPod, (in a Breach of Trust mood today) and instantly get deafened by the settings I use in the car. Whups. 100% -> 50% output. Less pain.
Listening is enjoyable, but the sound is ‘damaged’. Bass response if notably reduced, which is rather weird because noise cancellation doesn’t really have to happen much down there, and it usually more difficult to do because of the high-latency… While playing music, it ‘feels’ (acoustically) that you’ve either got a cold, just come out of a loud concert and your ears are desensitized; during quiet moments of a song, you feel as if in an anechoic chamber or listening with too much echo-cancellation (used for cell and VoIP calls)… That said – it doesn’t really ruin the enjoyment of the music.
But when you take them off after even 10 minutes… Wow.
I had no idea this room was _that_ loud. I knew it was noisy… but not this noisy. Think of standing at a very busy intersection… you have to almost shout to be heard.
The data center that the SVRNi gear is in is significantly louder too, I wear ear plugs there now.
So yeah, if I’m going to continue working in these types of environments… which we all know I will… I’m going to invest in something to protect my hearing. Unbelievable.
Now I don’t want to take them off.