headphones and music man! cant work without music
Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
11–20 of 26 posts
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#12I've had great success over the last 10 years with a pair of Sennheiser 280 HD Pro over-the-ear headphones (https://en-us.sennheiser.com/hd-280-pro). They are great at passive noise attenuation across the spectrum (32 dB) and are extremely comfortable for long periods. It doesn't hurt that they sound great (if you like a flat frequency response) and since they are made for pro DJ and studio use, they're durable and the cord, ear pads, and headband pad are replaceable.
If I don't want the distraction of music, but still need to wipe out the sound of people talking nearby, I fire up https://rain.simplynoise.com/.
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#13Tell the people to STFU?
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#14Voices, especially high ones, are kryptonite for NC, but the very latest models do better with them than I've ever heard before. My Bose QC35s and QC20s both do a great job of making a voice six feet away sound at least 20 feet away, and voices over 10-15 feet away not sound at all. I think the QC25s and QC30s will be similarly good. The new Sony MDR-1000X are also supposedly showing next-gen NC performance, accordin…
I have the QC25; they similalry for me as the other models do for you. I'd highly recommend them to someone looking for silence in an open office
(Note that you'll have to be listening to some sort of sound for them to be maximally effective; simply turning on the noise cancellation without playing music or some other sound through them reduces the noise, but not by as much)
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#15Voices, especially high ones, are kryptonite for NC, but the very latest models do better with them than I've ever heard before. My Bose QC35s and QC20s both do a great job of making a voice six feet away sound at least 20 feet away, and voices over 10-15 feet away not sound at all. I think the QC25s and QC30s will be similarly good. The new Sony MDR-1000X are also supposedly showing next-gen NC performance, accordin…
I knew about the Bose models but did not know about the Sony MDR-1000X. As you mentioned, none seem to completely stop voices, although your experience is very good at least at lessening them.
I was actually thinking of wearing earplugs and headphones at once. Thanks for the info
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#16A few folks have mentioned white noise already. I used to work in an open-office layout with about 50 people, and I found it was much easier to mentally cancel out the chatter with consistent, light, inoffensive background noise than to try to create silence.
http://mynoise.net was great, and I only had a $10 pair of in-ear earbuds. I haven't used the site since changing jobs, but I remember liking Rain On A Tent, Wooden Chimes, and mumbly-voice environments like Laundromat and Airport Terminal.
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#17The best $50 I've ever spent has been on a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-ANC2 noise cancelling earbuds. Are they as good as Bose or other over-ear versions? No, but they are significantly better than non noise canceling and pretty cheap. Paired with a white noise generator (I use Spotify that has many), and the loud coffee shop chatter fades away and I can get work done.
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#18Voices, especially high ones, are kryptonite for NC, but the very latest models do better with them than I've ever heard before. My Bose QC35s and QC20s both do a great job of making a voice six feet away sound at least 20 feet away, and voices over 10-15 feet away not sound at all. I think the QC25s and QC30s will be similarly good. The new Sony MDR-1000X are also supposedly showing next-gen NC performance, accordin…
I knew about the Bose models but did not know about the Sony MDR-1000X. As you mentioned, none seem to completely stop voices, although your experience is very good at least at lessening them. I was actually thinking of wearing earplugs and headphones at once. Thanks for the info
The 1000X is bleeding new. It's been out in Europe for a few weeks, and is just now coming out in US I believe.
After having gone through a number of pretty expensive NC headphones, I can say confidently that up until now nothing matched late-model Bose for NC specifically (music sound quality is another discussion). Parrot came closest, but everything else was way behind and really only blocked airplane/subway/bus-type loud hum, nothing more random or higher-pitched.
However, the initial reviews for the 1000X have all been pretty adamant that the 1000X matches and possibly beats the QC35 for NC. That's an amazing accomplishment for Sony, no lie.
At any rate, you're welcome. I have really bad noise sensitivities that make productivity hard in shared spaces, so your question is near and dear to my heart.
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#19I've had great success over the last 10 years with a pair of Sennheiser 280 HD Pro over-the-ear headphones ( https://en-us.sennheiser.com/hd-280-pro ). They are great at passive noise attenuation across the spectrum (32 dB) and are extremely comfortable for long periods. It doesn't hurt that they sound great (if you like a flat frequency response) and since they are made for pro DJ and studio use, they're durable and…
I found this list for best noise-isolation headphones: http://headphonesaddict.com/best-noise-isolating-earbuds. There's a Sennheiser in the top 2. I may consider noise-isolation over noise-canceling. Would be great if there was a noise-canceling pair with amazing noise-isolation properties as well.
The simplenoise.com site is great. Thanks
Re: Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space?
#20You could surgically remove your eardrums.