1. Noise Canceling Headphones

I recently talked to a Microsoft SharePoint consultant about the vagaries of airplane travel. He proudly showed me a pair of Bose QC2s, which he used with a PSP on his many travels. As we regaled each other with horror stories of loud server rooms and ill-behaved infants traveling by air, I realized that spending lots of bucks on noise reduction instead of audiophile nirvana wasn’t so silly.

Noise canceling headphones usually claim that they sample the ambient noise spectrum, via a microphone, and generate opposite phase sound to cancel out the external sounds. This claim is made even for the cheap units that retail for under $100. I recently purchased three sub-$100 models hoping to find something acceptable and inexpensive. I returned all three of them due to their unacceptable sound qualities and/or negligible noise reduction capabilities.

On the other hand, as great as the Bose noise reduction is in the QC2s, the Bose sound is not considered flat or neutral. Next to my reference Sennheiser HD-580s, the Bose QC2 headphones did not sound realistic to my ears. In any case, I certainly did not want to spend $299 for the QC2s, and Bose sound gear never sells at a discount. (Sometimes Bose offers giveaways, but does not reduce the price for single purchases.) I was anxious to try the first mid-priced units I found, which were the JVC HA-NC250 and the more expensive Creative Aurvana X-Fi. Though the Aurvanas list in Bose territory, I suspected that I could find them for less. In any case, Aurvana has two other integrated features that the Bose does not include.