peterkim blog

A common misconception is that active noise canceling headphones like the Bose QuietComfort headphones are the best at reducing external noise. The truth is that while active noise canceling headphones excel at cutting down low frequency noise like office fans and airplane jets, they are not necessarily the best for cutting down higher frequency noise, such as people’s voices. The active noise reduction process also significantly degrades the quality of the source audio. Active noise canceling headphones also tend to be much more expensive than their alternatives, therefore making them a poorer value.

Active noise canceling headphones are a less than optimal choice for isolating noise from chatty officemates because of their inability to cut down higher frequency noise. The better solutions are the ear canal-type headphones and sealed, closed back headphones.

Ear canal headphones

A lot of people dislike ear canal-type headphones because of discomfort. Their effectiveness also largely depends on the fit of the earpieces. Optimal quality can only be achieved by getting a custom ear mold created, which can cost hundreds of dollars. However, since they completely seal out external noise by blocking the ear canal passage, they offer the greatest degree of noise reduction, even more-so than active noise canceling headphones. Some of the more highly rated manufacturers of ear canal type headphones are Etymotics, Shure and Ultimate Ears. I have the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 3 Studio, which sound really good—they allow me to hear detail in my music that I had missed when using other headphones. They’re not very good for bass-heavy music like R&B and hip hop—UE’s marketing material states they are ideal for classical and jazz, but they also work well for acoustic guitar music (e.g. Jack Johnson, Allison Krauss, etc.) and other rock music that is not bass-heavy.

Sealed, closed-back headphones

These are headphones most commonly used by DJs. This type of headphone reduce external noise by using padding on the ear cups to provide as tight a seal as possible. This design obviously does not provide as much noise reduction as ear canal headphones but are more comfortable to most people. They also usually provide at least the same amount of noise reduction as active noise canceling headphones (with some models such as the Sennheiser HD-280 Pro providing more noise reduction), while not degrading the quality of the source audio. I just placed an order for the Sennheiser HD-202, a low-end closed-back set of headphones, which are only $23 on Amazon.com. The closed-back headphones tend to be bass-heavy, which I don’t really like, but I figure I can just EQ it out.

I’ve paraphrased a lot of this info from sifting through headphone.com, a great resource for information on portable audio.