Tune In - Tune Out

June 2nd, 2006

I have used portable media players for years now. From the basic Walkman, generic MP3 player, and now an iPod, I have had ear buds shoved in my ears for some time. One of my favorite uses is to listen to audio books on my commute into NYC. Between train and walk time, I can do quite a bit of “reading” each day. Listening to anything through earphones gives you a great appreciation of just how LOUD the city is.

After walking past diesel locomotives that vibrate your body and the loud blast of air brakes, once I hit the street, the normal din of buses, trucks, and taxis easily competes with the volume of audio being injected directly into my ears. It is no wonder people are having hearing problems as they need to crank the volume to compete with surrounding noise. Throw in some horns and a siren, and you may as well shut the sound off.

When traveling on airplanes, I often saw people wearing large, ear covering headphones — you know the ones that ’70s roller skaters wore. It turns out that these are noise canceling headphones that actually listen to the surrounding noise and through active electronics, phase out background noise. I looked into getting these, but when your headphones are larger than your player, it hardly becomes a portable situation. Also, the fewer things with batteries the better.

The other types of noise canceling earphones are passive. These block out noise by being shoved into your ears forming a tight acoustical seal. They come with a few different size ear cups for varying ear canals. They work very well and may actually help combat hearing loss since you don’t need to turn up the volume as high.

I am using Shure E2c’s which are about $100. There are other models that have wider frequency ranges costing over $500.

There are some safety issues to consider whenever using any earphones. If they work too well, then you can’t hear any outside noises like, “hey buddy! Watch out for that bus!” Driving is another activity that you should be cautious with, and I’m sure it must be illegal to drive with earphones in both ears.

But what’s the point of having great audio if your earphones aren’t any good? Or if you can’t hear the audio over all of the noise pollution?

Shure Earphones are available here.

Entry Filed under: iPod, Digital Living, Technology

Send to a Friend