On Wednesday, Mar 27, 2002, at 15:41 Asia/Tokyo, I wrote:
> I went shopping in one of those huge
> electronics supermarkets we have here in Tokyo, and found out that the
> Sony MDRNC20
[snip]
> a very worthy companion to my MDLP player.
After a few months (and intensive travel), I still think it's a cool
product, but I was not really satisfied with it.
Noise-cancelling phones have some inherent flaws:
- Even though the noise cancellation is "active", they need a good seal
to prevent noise to get in. Most phones try to achieve this by having
the cans press like crazy on your ears, which means you can't wear them
for more than a few hours or your ears get very red, hot, and painful.
I guess it's even worse with the sonys, because sony usually make their
headband very tight anyway.
- They're not real phones. The sound is not really good, and they can't
be used as "regular" phones, unless you really don't care about sound
quality. I used to think this was OK, you can't get everyting for this
price, and the sound isolation is not good enough anyway, so if the
phones were really good I wouldn't make any difference anyway when
using the phones as they should, ie for noise cancelling.
- they're not (very) portable. Good noise-cancelling phones need to be
closed cans. in-ear phones just don't work well for this purpose (I
think sony makes some of those), so you have to carry the big cans. Not
very good for some travel gear.
Yet I thought that was the best I could get, pretty-good
noise-cancelling, cheap sound. OK for the price.
Until some day, I went shopping for new "real" phones. I discovered a
cool site with apparently knowlegeable advice, OK prices, and so I
browsed their site:
headroom corp -
http://www.headphone.com
They seemed to be crazy about a pair of "canal phones" (Etymotic
Research ER4s[1]). Those are made by hearing professionals, and are
aimed at stage or orchestra musicians, who don't want to have their
hearing damaged (ever stood in the middle of an orchestra, or spent
every night at concerts for some time?), but still want good sound.
It's a strange product. Take noise-cancelling foams (or rubber tips,
swimmers and travellers may know those), and stick miniature (yet
hi-fi) transducers in, and you have the etymotics canal phones.
Using those things is awkward, and can be uncomfortable at first, since
you have to stick something inside you ear canal, quite deep actually
(it doesn't get so deep it's dangerous, though), and have the tip seal
your ear completely (the rubber tips made so good a seal that it caused
me air pressure trouble in my ears for days, I switched to the foam
ones). But once you get used to them (took me a couple of weeks), oh
my, oh my.
I'm not an audiophile, but I listen to music all day every day, and I
love music. And yes I'm impressed and drooling when I listen to some
great audio gear in a wonderful listening room, not because of the
price tag or the shiny tubes, but because the music is clear and
detailed (many people say they don't make any difference, but when you
can ear distinctly each instrument in a band, or hear and locate every
instrument in an orchestra, you understand what this is all about...
but enough digression already...). And that's what these phones give :
~20-25 dB of phonic isolation, thanks to the good seal (note that the
best noise cancelling phone are around 10-15dB...), and an oh-my-god
great sound.
The noise cancellation is incredible. Compared to (active)
noise-cancelling phones, you get a better isolation, and all across the
freq range (whereas active ones only cover part of it). Where NC phones
made the 15-hours-flights not-too-awful, these actually made me forget
I was flying (my legs, back and butt reminded me of it, though, but
that's a different story). Besides, the transducers are so close to the
ear drums there is almost no distortion, and so all they had to do was
to stick the response curves to the ear's one (did I mention they were
ear specialists?)
The sound is incredible, too. Ugly at first, I must say, but once the
transducers started breaking-in (a few hours), it became wonderful.I
bought the "audiophile" high-impedance version (ER4s) because I wanted
to try one of those mini-headphone amps headroom makes (an interesting
product, too... they have some cross-feeding circuits, which means you
hear some of the right channel in your left hear, and vice-versa, just
like with real speakers. It does make the headphones-listening more
pleasant and natural), but they also make "regular" ones (ER4p) at the
same price.
Bottom line? Tiny, incredible sound, incredible noise cancellation.
Price tag? ah, well, yes, they're not so cheap. They're sold around
250$. That's the price for top-of-the-line phones, except that with
these ones, you get great noise-cancelling phones at no expense
(neither price, space, or sound...).
[1]
http://headphone.com/
layout.php?topicID=3&subTopicID=26&productID=0020100000
--
Olivier - no, no, I don't own headroom or etymotic shares...