Gear / Technical Help > Battery Boxes, Preamps, Mixers, ADCs, and Processors
Noise Canceling Headphones
earmonger:
Color me ultra dubious about noise-canceling phones. Fully agreed that passive noise cancellation--earbuds in earplugs--is the way to go.
There are about a zillion IEMs out there now, but old favorites like Shure are still good and so are newer ones like 1More Triple-Fi (under $100) or RHA.
It's all about how they fit, though. Try every size of tips that come in the package--all but one will sound terrible and give you no isolation. If you have big ol' ear canals like I do, you can go even puffier and more isolating with Comply tips.
If you want to dive into the true madness, www.head-fi.org has all you need to know and so very much more.
Gutbucket:
--- Quote from: earmonger on February 25, 2018, 10:08:12 PM ---Color me ultra dubious about noise-canceling phones.
--- End quote ---
Please explain why.
The highest sound-quality reduction I've ever experienced was a combination of active+passive-reduction. As mentioned the only issue was lack of sufficient headroom in the active circuitry at higher SPLs. At SPLs which didn't overload the circuitry the sound quality was glorious. This could also provide the potential of custom tailoring the reduction curve to whatever you want within the maximum-achievable reduction envelope of the system, non-linear variable loudness curves, etc.
Scooter123:
Passive won't color the sound in anyway.
I was going to recommend Sony 7506 cans, but the link that Gutbucket gave you is the 7506 driver with additional insulation to make them more soundproof
Gutbucket:
^ Scoob's link. (probably the best available solution for monitoring in a noisy environment)
Passive most definitely colors the sound. Hence the muffled effect from foam-plugs - which is the most basic form of passive-reduction. More highly engineered passive-reduction techniques aim to shape the reduction response via various mechanical filtering systems in order to sound more transparent. But all are essentially limited to no greater reduction than whatever the minimum reduction happens to be anywhere across the full bandwidth (which will be dominated by LF, hence the great potential advantage of active-reduction in that region) and none provide a reduction curve custom-tailored to the individual's personal hearing response curve. The reduction curves of various products may be more appropriate in a general population sense, but we all know how variable personal hearing response is compared to average response. It's very difficult to find a truly accurate reduction curve match which will sound transparent for each individual. And if you do it's only truly applicable to one SPL level (the curve varies with level as an inverse "loudness curve").
Practically, if you can find passive-reduction plugs which sound transparent enough for you and you are happy with, great!
rumbleseat:
I agreee with Gut - Passive for HF, Active for LF.
The best solution I've stumbled into is to use a set of In-Ear Monitors for monitoring, and place a pair of Noise Cancelling headphones on top of them. The IEMs feed you the signal and the NC headphones are turned on, but are not plugged in to your source. I have an old pair of Bose NC headphones that work reasonably well for reducing the "whump whump whump" effect at EDM shows. Better than earplugs/IEMs alone. Take note that since the NC headphones will be pumping as hard as they can, the battery life will be drastically reduced.
BTW, this combo is a dream on long airplane flights!
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