These will be used with my MP3 player. All of the music on my player I personally ripped from CD's, these are not low quality downloads, in case that matters.

I plan on using these at work, so I would prefer not to have a big set of studio headphones on.

With so much out there and no chance at testing any of them, recommendations?

 

This is right in your price range.

 

I'd go with something in the Etymotic style, where it's basically an ear plug you hear music through. I have some Altec Lansings that they developed in conjunction with Etymotic. I can mow the lawn and the mower is just a hum in the background. They work great on airplanes too without the electronic effects of other 'Noise Cancelling' types or battery issues and weight. Do a search for "in ear monitors or noise isolation earphones," you should find what I'm talking about. My Altecs are model iM716, which they don't make anymore and don't make anything similar anymore (probably above their target audience pricepoint, they were 200 list). Etymotic has 2 models in your price range, $79 and 149. They get great reviews for accuracy, and kill 30's to low 40's dB range as far as noise isolation.

The only downside is they do act like earplugs as you can't hear much else, but damn they sound good in a noisy environment.

 

Didn't you ban him?


So are they noise cancelling because they fit so well no other sounds come in or do they also have some kind of noise cancelling circuit that drowns out the noise? I'm assuming the former since they don't have a separate power supply?

I like the idea of "ear plugs" with speakers, reason why I started this thread is the few I tested out, the white noise created by the noise cancelling circuit was rather annoying. Even in some of the high end units.

Something like these:

 

That would be them. Noise isolation because they seal off the ear canal. I too did not like the electronic noise cancelling. I went through several types of ear bud and on the ear types and nothing really worked on airplanes except for the Etymotic style. It's amazing how that engine noise gets through most ear phones. I never purchased the electronic types just from auditioning them.

I'm sure there are other noise isolation types out there now other than the Ety's, but I"m pretty sure they were the originators and do it well.

 

Cool, thanks for the info.

Poking around, check these out:

Foam ear plugs with holes built in for the speakers, cool.

 

Link doesn't work. However, if it's what I'm thinking of, the Etymotics come with the foam fittings also if the other silicone ones don't fit right. I use the triple flange ones currently. The foam ones are very comfortable, but I wonder how long they would last with constant use.

 

I ordered the Etymotoic HF5 - $125 shipped

 

I'm positive you will be very happy with them. Good price too.

 

Thanks Tony, they are awesome!!! I'm probably going to have the custom ear buds made too.

 

Knew you'd like them. I'll be using mine again for some cross country flights. Like I said before, only ones I've found that work on an airplane without batteries and electronic effects. Enjoy.

 

FWIW, overall noise reduction is a combination of 2 separate measurements.

Passive: a function of the around/in ear seal, primarily a clamping force effect.
Active: a function of the feedback's loop gain over the frequency of interest.

In something like a Bose noise cancelling headset, the passive is limited by the amount of clamping force that a customer will accept as "comfortable" ; the electronics have to make up the rest (within the constraints of size and cost).

The Bose Aviation headsets often get very good customer feedback for the combination of the two, but IMHO, this was probably their best effort to date (little known product that had a very interesting development history behind it)

http://www.bose.com/controller?event...ry/triport.jsp