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I actually have a set of a aviation active noise canceling headphones someone gave me as a gift. They are made to be standalone so they don't have any microphone and just take some 9v batteries. They work incredibly well at blocking out sounds and noise by themselves but I've found if you put some disposable earplugs in before you put the headphones on, then they block out ALL sound. I can't hear people who are standing 3 feet in front of me trying to talk to me much less someone who would be on the other side of a wall. Anything you wear on your head for long periods of time is eventually going to get uncomfortable, but as they are essentially aircraft headsets they are designed to be worn for long periods of time so you can wear them for some time before you have to take a break. http://www.davidclark.com/HeadsetPgs/ENCHearProt.html

They have a USB version that would work with your computer.

Yeah, that would be pretty slick, and DC was the first thing I thought of. The DC aviation headset I have has two plugs - one for the headphone (1/4" stereo) and one smaller for the mic - they can't be mixed up. You can certainly find or fashion a connector to merge these two functions into one 1/8" plug, for say an iPhone.

The biggest problem I can foresee is power. If you're using some type of wireless, it will take a bit of juice to drive a headset of this size. I can see it wearing out something like an iPhone pretty quickly. If you want to hardline it, I don't see why you couldn't disassemble a POTS handset and wire in a female receptacle for something like the DC headset plugs. I would talk to someone smarter than me about basic electrical circuits to see how you could wire up a volume/gain control to the handset, even though the headset itself has independent volume controls.

http://www.davidclark.com/

http://www.davidclark.com/ is what is used in many helicopters and light planes.

As far as hearing protection goes, if you're going to be wearing them for any length of time, you owe it to yourself to get ones made by David Clark.

I don't work for them, I'm just a very satisfied customer and user of their products. Second-generation user of their products, actually; I have a set of DC hearing protectors that used to be my father's, that are getting on 40 years old now.

Their list of products are here. I have the model 10A, although if you have big ears that stick out, you probably want the 19A. Allegedly the model 27 is "deluxe," although I don't know in what way they're different. The 10A model is the one they've been making since basically the Earth stopped cooling, and I don't think you'd have a problem getting parts for them in the future.

If you want to spend some money, you can get basically the exact same product as the 10A hearing protectors, but made into headphones. These aren't active noise-cancelling, they're just passive noise-reduction, but they're probably the best you're ever going to find. Equipped with microphones, they're very popular for use in helicopters (watch in some movies and about 50% of the time you'll see DC headsets being used in helis). They have a lot of room inside, if your 'buds don't stick out too much I doubt you'd have a problem with this. Although it might be a reason to get the 19A model.

The 10A model has a noise reduction of 23dB, and unlike earplugs, they don't make your breathing echo in your head quite so much. If you got ones with speakers inside (headphones) it would mean you could play music, without having to jack the volume up to dangerous levels. Alternately, if you didn't want to spend the money on DC's headphones you could just wear earbuds and then put the passive protectors on over it.

The really nice thing about DC 'sets, is that they're designed to be worn for long periods. Unlike some cheaper ear protectors that just use a spring-metal band connected to the top of the ear cups (pretty much every set of hardware store or cheap shooting protectors are made like this), resulting in more pressure on your head at the top of the cups than at the bottom, the DC ones are designed so that the pressure of the cups is distributed evenly, so you don't get sore. Also, they adjust using set screws instead of just using friction, so you can adjust them to your head and lock them there; they won't slip around. They have nice replaceable foam ear rings, as well. (When the ones in mine started to break down, I wrote to them and they sent me a set of replacement ones free.)

I use my DC 10As for pistol shooting mostly, and they're hands-down the most comfortable ear protection I've ever worn. (And if you really need a lot of noise reduction, you can combine them with foam plugs for something like 46dB of noise reduction; that's enough to safely do high-power rifle indoors -- you'll feel the pressure in your eyes more than in your ears like that.)

You do get a lot of funny looks wearing them around, but if you're a geek and don't mind looking like a helicopter pilot, I don't think you'll find a better set of passive hearing protectors.

I think I know the perfect product for you ... get yourself a pair of these. Sure, you'll look like you just walked off the flight deck of the USS Enterprise (the real one), but you can order practically any combination of microphone element and speaker elements you want, with either XLR plugs or bare ends. They have the same amount of noise reduction as their industrial hearing protectors, too. (I use a set of the hearing protectors for handgun shooting, and they do work as advertised.)

And it just looks so much more serious than those cheesy dictation headsets. When you're wearing one of those things, you mean some sort of business. They even have an accessory so that you can wear your tinted aviator shades at the same time, without carving divots in your head. Or if you feel like doing some desk-chair acrobatics, you can strap it to your face.

Course, they will set you back about a deuce and a half.

I think I know the perfect product for you ... get yourself a pair of these. Sure, you'll look like you just walked off the flight deck of the USS Enterprise (the real one), but you can order practically any combination of microphone element and speaker elements you want, with either XLR plugs or bare ends. They have the same amount of noise reduction as their industrial hearing protectors, too. (I use a set of the hearing protectors for handgun shooting, and they do work as advertised.)

And it just looks so much more serious than those cheesy dictation headsets. When you're wearing one of those things, you mean some sort of business. They even have an accessory so that you can wear your tinted aviator shades at the same time, without carving divots in your head. Or if you feel like doing some desk-chair acrobatics, you can strap it to your face.

Course, they will set you back about a deuce and a half.

I think I know the perfect product for you ... get yourself a pair of these. Sure, you'll look like you just walked off the flight deck of the USS Enterprise (the real one), but you can order practically any combination of microphone element and speaker elements you want, with either XLR plugs or bare ends. They have the same amount of noise reduction as their industrial hearing protectors, too. (I use a set of the hearing protectors for handgun shooting, and they do work as advertised.)

And it just looks so much more serious than those cheesy dictation headsets. When you're wearing one of those things, you mean some sort of business. They even have an accessory so that you can wear your tinted aviator shades at the same time, without carving divots in your head. Or if you feel like doing some desk-chair acrobatics, you can strap it to your face.

Course, they will set you back about a deuce and a half.

I think the solution there is get headphones on which the foam surrounds are replacable, and get them from a manufacturer that's likely to still be in business when it's time to get a new set.

Personally I'm a fan of Grado Labs, since I think they satisfy both these objectives, but I'm sure there are other companies that would fit the bill. The surrounds pop on and off fairly easily, and the cord is also replacable (although you'd need a soldering iron -- or send them back to the factory, which I'm sure is the legit method).

Although they're not what the OP is looking for, I also have several products from the David Clark Company, which makes hearing protectors, headphones, and communication headsets (they apparently also make anti-G suits for pilots, which I was not aware of). I have a pair of hearing protectors from them that is close to 35 years old, and they're still making them. I just got a new set of foam surrounds for them, and they might as well be brand new. (It's the model 10A, if anyone's checking.)

There's no reason why properly maintained, well-built analog gear ought not last you long enough to pass along to your kids.

This headset is the most comfortable headset I've ever worn. I've had it on for 20hr days and it's still bearable. Oh, that's not what you had in mind? But it's got great urban 'curb appeal'.

but you listen to your portable MP3 player with headphones. You're probably not going to notice the difference

Why why why why do people keep saying that headphones don't show defects in reproduction????

Most headphones don't have a frequency response that reaches as low as some speakers, but the artifacts of lossy CODECs pushed too far (too low a bitrate for too challenging material) are mostly in the higher octaves. Swirl, warble and pre-echo don't need bass response to be obvious.

The distortion of cheap headphones (when not overdriven) isn't even that obvious. The sound isn't as "good" as with better headphones, but it doesn't jump out like lossy artifacts. It's subtle stuff (besides lack of bass mind you) like a lack of "air" or "harshness" or "flatness."

Now, earbuds in a Manhattan subway station aren't a good critical listening environment, but speakers wouldn't work there either. If the room is reasonably quiet, you're going to hear artifacts better in $2 earbuds than speakers and if the room has AC and computer fans going, fully enclosed headphones will beat speakers to death with a titanium pipe.

While I worked on pro audio equipment (I'm a firmware engineer) for four years & watched Dave Rossum test H-chips with Sennheiser elements inside over-ear hearing protectors (the "dave clark specials"), my own experience backs up the theory. Try it yourself sometime. A/B a marginal mp3 with phones & with speakers & see which shows defects better.

The audio fidelity on the whole is as good as can be expected. We all know what MP3 encoding does to your tunes if you have a reasonable speakers

All mp3 decoders are not created equal and I sure wish reviewers would dig a little deeper. If they go beyond navigation and I/O features and cover audio quality, it's typically only to mention background hum or hiss or a wimpy headphone amplifier.

mp3 at high bitrates created with a competent encoder (LAME is one) can sound pretty good. Decoding with cheap 16 bit DSPs such as the TMS320C54x used in the Rio One is hard to do-- you have to watch out for error accumulation (e.g. please round to zero instead of simply truncating).

If you don't believe me that decoders differ, consider these tests of PC decoders. Unfortunately, no one seems to do such detailed testing on embedded decoders.

I'm giving my Rio One to my nephew who will be so thrilled to have it that if he hears the high-frequency errors on playback of middlin' bitrates (192kbps), he probably won't mind.

I don't know what I'm going to replace it with, though. I know I shouldn't expect much out of a $80 player powered from on AA cell, but there's no guarantee that a $400 Rio Riot or iPod will be glitch-free: they might have spent the whole power and cost budget on LCDs, hard drives and amortizing development.

A StrongARM-based PocketPC might be the answer- plenty of horsepower to run less compromised 16 bit decoder or even a 24 bit or floating point one. It should also be able to decode ogg vorbis....

By the way, instead of reasonable speakers, I'm using a good pair of headphones. Much more bang for the buck when it comes to revealing audio defects, though the Sonys tend to be a bit shrill (well the older V6s that I have) for long-term listening. These are the same model we used when I was at E-mu for all normal testing. The only thing more revealing was the elements from a good pair of Sennheisers in a set of noise protection muffs to cut background noise by 23dB. Also, some of the ATC guys have Grado electrostatics.

• SONY MBR-NC20
  Good cancelling. Excellent in machine rooms and labs. Comfortable and easy to wear on a flight.
• Panasonic (about 80$)
  Insurance company bought these as a replacement for the NC20's. Not impressed. The build quality is noticably worse and the cancellation is poor as well. These headphones do not sit well on your head and are uncomfortable in a matter of minutes.
• David Clark H10-13XL
  Big passive attenuation with ANC as well. Very comfortable. I can wear these all day, sadly, you can't really plug your MP3 player into these and you'd look a bit daft on the tube in these.

• SONY MBR-NC20
  Good cancelling. Excellent in machine rooms and labs. Comfortable and easy to wear on a flight.
• Panasonic (about 80$)
  Insurance company bought these as a replacement for the NC20's. Not impressed. The build quality is noticably worse and the cancellation is poor as well. These headphones do not sit well on your head and are uncomfortable in a matter of minutes.
• David Clark H10-13XL
  Big passive attenuation with ANC as well. Very comfortable. I can wear these all day, sadly, you can't really plug your MP3 player into these and you'd look a bit daft on the tube in these.