“As a final test I took my headphones on a street run last night. I picked out the quietest CD that I have, Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, which never really gets above a whisper. Walking through Lincoln Center, which was crowded with concertgoers, I barely heard a thing… The final test was a Subway ride. While I can’t say that the Subway ride was noise free, the headphones did a wonderful job of blocking all but the loudest noises. I didn’t even miss notes when the express train rumbled through my station…” – Amazon customer’s review of the noise-canceling Sennheiser PX 250, via laug, a TeleBlog reader.
A less favorable review from the U.K.: Here, from LordPercy.com. “The PXC250 headphones are a cool bit of kit, but they do not really offer the kind of sound isolation the price [£80] warrants…” Current price on Amazon’s U.S. site is $79.99.
Related: Noise-proofing my head: The joys of Extreme Isolation Headphones for a podcast junkie. On a four-and-a-half-mile walk yesterday, I enjoyed the sound-proofing but still heard rather conspicuous thumps when my heels hit the sidewalk. The insoles helped somewhat, however. Meanwhile I’m wondering if there might be a way to redesign the EI headphones to reduce the loudness of the thumps. If nothing else, I wonder what the thumps mean from a tinnitus perspective, versus the louder volume at which I’d be playing my iPod if I weren’t wearing the noise-attenuating headphones.
I have a set of PXC-250 headphones and am very happy with them. They perform very well on airplanes or trains or in other environments where there is a more or less constant background noise.
They will *not* isolate you from all sound. If you are on an airplane with a screaming baby, you will still hear some of that sound.
True sound isolating, in-the-ear channel headphones apparently block all. I’ve never tried these, but I’ve read much from people who swear by models from Shure or Etymotic. These probably wouldn’t be too safe for walking around busy streets — you very well could not hear a car coming at you.
Oh, the usefuless of the TeleBlog for learning from readers! Thanks, Doug! As for not hearing a car coming toward me, that’s a real concern of mine, now that I’m hearing the Direct Sound headphones with 28 decibels of attenuation. – David
whoa…i made it to the frontpage 😀
so i guess you’d want to buy another pair to use outdoor?
pxc200/250/300 i’m sure is more compact than your Direct Sound too…
I just read this from Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/the-plug-from-koss-seals-off-your-ear-canal-163389.php)
The Plug from Koss Seals Off Your Ear Canal
When you’re using in-ear phones, the seal is everything, and Koss is attempting to capitalize on that phenomenon with The Plug, earbuds with shape-shifting hydrophillic urethane tips that conform to the shape of your ear canal. At just $14.95, it seems impossible that these earphones will sound very good, but the idea of a form-fitting seal is certainly on the right track.
We’ve tried other earphones with similar characteristics, and if you get that seal just right, the result is skull-pounding bass and crystal-clear highs. Koss claims frequency response of 10 to 20,000 Hz with these babies. Yeah, right. We’ll believe it when we hear it.