Noise cancelling headphones

janeken

I would welcome some advice on the above please. Do they work and are the over ear type better than the in ear? If you have a recommendation so much the better. We don't have a massive budget so Bose or similar are out of the question.

These are a possible Christmas present for our granddaughter who is in her first year at university. Unfortunately the five other people she shares with are extremely noisy and she finds it almost impossible to relax in her room. The noise continues through the night so she is quite tired and stressed about this.

We are wondering if these could help alleviate the problem until she moves out of halls of residence next year and as we have no experience of these headphones we would welcome some advice.

globalds

Could you tell her to try some ear plugs first?
I have noise canceling headphones for flying and the one drawback is that they are not great for trying to sleep with.
Just a decent set of plugs might help. But there is the risk of not hearing important announcements.

Mr.Generous

they work for very loud noise, they are designed to allow talking (the one's we use with noisy tools were originally purchased for shooting).

paddyrg

They affect noises upto 1kHz (thanks to physics), so great for planes and droney noises, throbby basslines, but not universally a solution.

7 Day Shop sell dome which are around £20 and whilst a slightly delicate build compared with some, offer remarkable bang for buck. They're as effecive at active attenuation as some professional pilot ones I have.

Passive attenuation comes from a sturdy cup and firm compression - the Sennheisers win hands down on this front, but the 7DS ones are at least over-ear and better than in-ear ones.

googler

£9 ear defenders from Screwfix or B&Q over regular ear-buds

esuhl

I have some noise-isolating earphones, which are great. You can listen to quiet music in noisy environments. But also, I sometimes put them in without listening to anything, just to use as earplugs.

And because they don't have any noise-cancelling circuitry you don't need an extra battery.

The ones I have are the Shure E2 model, which have been discontinued, but there are probably similar products available. The sound-quality is amazing.

I'm not sure how expensive Bose ones are, but the Shure E2 were about £75, I think.

Backbiter

googler wrote: »

£9 ear defenders from Screwfix or B&Q over regular ear-buds

Is this a serious option? My 82 year old dad has a ride on mower and loves to listen to the radio while mowing, but says he can hardly hear it above the noise of the mower. He uses ear bud headphones at the moment.
These ear defenders (the Stanley ones have great reviews) would make a good Christmas present!

Ainsley1

I would also recommend Sennheiser headphones, over the ear type hd205 are good and great value.
However - it is never straightforward - these are like many external noise reducing earphones relying on the good fit for isolation and will give a good isolation at that......but they are not active noise cancelling ones! They will be a very good compromise between audio quality, noise reduction and price.
If noise reduction is the most important feature do compare specs with those recommended above such as those Dome ones that are slightly cheaper.

Any reduction in noise might be beneficial but might not eliminate the problem especially if your daughter has become sensitive to it. Possibly raising the issue in general with the hall's managers might help?

ARandomMiser

I do a lot of flying and received a pair of Sony MDR-ZX110NA headphones as a present. Sound quality and noise cancelling is quite good and they are comfortable to wear for longer periods of time. They fold up nice and flat and so far mine have been with me for nearly 3 years and over 100 flights.

John_Gray

It might be worth a look through Amazon's best sellers in noise-cancelling headphones, which shows a 7-Day Shop one in first position.

teddysmum

After reading that only some external sound is reduced, I decided against noise reducing Bose and went for 'regular' over ear Sennheisers from Richer Sounds.


They do cut out quite a bit of sound, as when my husband uses ours,he claims not to have heard what I said to him.:p