I'm 18 and am working my summer job at my local cemetery, mowing grass and weed whacking. Were always wearing ear protection and I have grown tired and my ears have grown sore from my ipod headphones under the ear protection. I'm looking for good headphones that go AROUND the ear that can block out enough noise from a very loud commericial lawn mower, yet have decent sound quality. I hope to keep it under $70. Ill end up taking these headphones to college to help me study in a crowded dorm room. It also must be compatible with an iPod. All help. I've looked into the Sony noise canceling headphones.Thanks in advance!
You probably do not need over the ear phones. In-the-ear, ear buds will probably do the trick. In the ear are nothing like the Apple garbage. They are all HiFi and eliminate outside noise interfearance to provide amazing audio. Philips makes some that can be had for about 20 USD. You will be shocked at the fidelity of the in-the-ear buds if you have any HiFi music. You have to spend thousands of dollars to buy speakers with that level of fidelity. I use mine and can eliminate outside noise of my 16HP mower at about 70% volume. A side note, in the ear buds are more damaging than the mowers if you crank them up. You will need to restrain yourself. That can be very hard to do. Most of the in the ear owners have a hard time keeping the volume down. The music can become inoxicating!
I have had a pair of Sony ear buds (MDR-EX51) that I bought 7 years ago for $50 and they still hold up great. I'm sure that my model isn't available anymore, but I highly recommend picking up a pair of sony earbuds. don't bother with noise cancelling headphones...they're way too expensive and would you want to take a pair of $300 headphones to work with you while you mow the lawn? no, me neither.
I just checked out the MDR-EX51. They can be purcahsed on Amazon for 16 USDs. That is the cheapest price for HiFi in-the-ear buds, which they are I have ever seen. I might buy a pair just to have a spare. I will need a new pair by the fall. djscoop, how often do you use your ear buds? 7 years is a very long time. Mine only last about a year. The copper wires work harden and become stiff. They are usable but not nice to use. I get the 'softest' wires to get a year out of them.
these wires are very soft and flexible. I too am AMAZED that I've had these headphones for seven years. I would have thought that by now I would have lost or broken them. Thats cool that they're only $16 now...they were $50 bucks when they were new to the market. They are great little headphones and a testament to Sony's quality and craftsmanship that I've had them for 7 years and haven't broken them yet (and beleive me, I'm not gentle with my electronic toys...the average cell phone lasts me about 6 months before I break it...)
I bet they have stopped making them and that is why they are $15. They claim new ones “are way better” except the stats are exactly the same. Bose doesn’t even give out their stats so you can’t check on them. My guess is their stats are identical to all the other brands of this style ear bud. The Sony has the exact same stats as my Philips and several other manufacturers. I say get the cheapest you can find of this style. 6 – 23,000 Hz is an amazing range. I bought a pair and cursed that I didn't buy 2. I wear out the wires from too much use in about a year. It is ridiculous that portables can have better quality sound than all but the extreme audio systems costing at least 10K.
LOL i totally agree buddy. 6 to 23k is an amazing yet somewhat ridiculous range. the most gifted musicians are lucky to hear above 18k, and anything below 40 or 50 Hz, is just vibration. the bass is so low you can't hear it, you only feel it.
Human hearing is nominally 20 - 20,000 Hz. 320 CBR normally cuts off a little above 20 kHz. Males lose the ability to hear 18,000 by about 20, women who don't listen to loud music hold on a few year more. There are ring tones and teanage crowd dispersal units that use this principal. It is not some wacky theroy. It is a age thing, sped up by abuse. It has nothing to do with skill. What you brain does with the sound is completely learned or skill thing. A music lover older than 30 will use up to 10 times the brain mass of a teanager when listening to complex music. I am anoyed by artifacts my 19 year old son can't hear. I know I can feel low notes. The buds do not give you the rush of a power that speakers do for the subsonics but at least you know they are there. I will look into the Lame GUI. PowerAmp is a GUI which appeals to my lazy side.
I used to use dBPowerAMP for years, but lately I was looking for something different. I do love the information plugin that dBPOwerAMP comes with in windows explorer though. i've heard all the above info in the various audio courses I teach , but I've never heard that listeners over 30 use 10 times the brain usage when processing music. thats very interesting...I will have to do some research on that.
Yes, do not quote me, I have not read the study from a reliable source. The story is, there was a study where they were studying brain activity with a device that shows brain activity. With most students, very little brain power is used when listening to music. Isn't THAT incredible! They probably don't use much while doing homework either. Then they tested a musician and hug parts of the brain lit up. The jest was that persons that are 'into' music use a significant portion of their brain to listen to music while casual listeners barely uses any. This may explain why as persons listen to more music they prefer more and more complex music and find listening very enjoyable. Music is addictive as long as you can 'move on'. Please post if you learn more on a new thread. I will need to PM you when I have some techie questions. Oh I will be using EAC by the end of this year. It is by far good enough. It is great that PA will do as much as possible in burst mode but shift gears when a problem is detected. I am not going to pay 25 USD/year for that. I had been ripping a large quantity of rare disks but I am done. I really do not like typing in all the tag data. I also use the converter heavily. That is also nearly at an end. Foobar2000 will also to great conversions but you need to have all the plug ins required in sync or you will get artifacts. I do not think Foobar does shn or even apple files. I forgot, yes the file explorer bubble info is indespensable! I really do not know what I would do without it. That stays active after PA dies. I would pay $25/year for that.
I haven't found that article which if I find it should go in a new thread. Here is music/brain research site. http://www.kingmusic1.com/fambrc.htm First they have Mozart making you smart then Follow up to Stage III of Drs. Shaw and Rauscher's research suggests that second graders who took piano lessons and worked with an interactive animated math software program significantly improves proportional math scores. That study I am looking for suggests music and probably complex music is excerise for the brain.
a great reason for parents to invest in music lessons for their children! LOL damn Mez you must have some very rare CDs if none of the online music databases have the album info and you have to type the tags in by hand...what a pain! I think you will be happy with EAC. once its configured and setup its pretty easy to use. Be sure to configure it properly, with the correct drive settings and the LAME plugin. Just follow the guide in my sig below. The guide is a few years old, but it still applies to the newer versions.
If you have any ringing in the ears protect what little hearing you have left & forget about music thru head phones while mowing coz the older you get the louder the ringing gets once it's already started,right now you maybe experiancing a slight ringing that's easily ignorable however those fine hairs die as you get older which at the minimum trebbles what you may hear now,right now my ringing is so loud i can hear it when mowing lawns when the muffs are on & yep it's a 12hp walkbehind & a 17hp rideon & both have forward facing mufflers & sitting here now the noise is deafining,don't ya just hate quiet rooms..lol..
yeah young people like teenagers need to be especially careful. with the popularity of ipods and in-the-ear headphone buds, its easy to do damage in no time. and once damage is don't its non repairable. you have thousands upon thousands of little tiny hairs in the inner ear which vibrate and translate the acoustical audio to chemical signals which the ear then sends to the brain. long exposure to loud music causes those fine hairs to break. once they break off, they don't grow back. so unless you want to be wearing hearing aids by the time you are forty, people need to be responsible when they listen to music. listening to short periods of loud music (such as going to a concert) generally is okay. what does damage is long term exposure to loud music (like going to a concert every night for days straight.) so long story short, in the same way that you don't want to look directly at the sun, you don't want to expose your ears to long term loud music or loud noise.
