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Wrong. Headphones DO block noise, if they look like these.

No, earbuds don't block noise, but those aren't "headphones".

You should be able to get a pair of sennheisers that fit around your ear.
It's could be worth paying extra at that price range and what ever is on special that closed and around the ear would work.
I have the 280s and they are pretty good for isolation.

In a related question: Can anyone tell me how to get more Bang for my buck?

12 gauge - always the best buy.

Short of that, try headphones. A pair of good headphones and you don't care about big amps, clumsy large speakers, room acoustics, your neighbors or your wife.

Sennhieser 650 - probably the best cost / performance headphone around.

Yes. Get yourself a high-quality set of wireless headphones. Go for the closed-cup design, as that will even drown out your wife's nagging and complaining about your excessive computer use.

http://www.sennheiserusa.com/wireless-headphone-stereo-surround-sound-headphones-502874

I had the same experience, but it took me a lot less time & money to reproduce it!

Some guy at work got a deal on Sennheiser open headphones, and I picked up a HD 595 for about AUD 300 back when they were about 450 in stores. I used a Sony amp I already had, and now my PC is set up so that the output from the PC goes to the amp over digital optics, and then I just plug the headphone into the amp. That eliminates the static and noise from the PC motherboard, otherwise the only function of the amp is that it provides a convenient volume control knob.

I used to have 'proper' speakers and amps for my PC, but the headphones are a night & day difference, even to my untrained ear. I immediately noticed subtle details in audio, and I can now easily hear compression artifacts that I couldn't detect before.

At the time, I was playing Diablo II, and I noticed little things in the audio I couldn't make out before. For example, the blacksmith in the second stage throws her hammer up in the air and catches it. There's a tiny little 'slap' sound when she catches the handle, which I just couldn't hear before.

I figured then that audio in some good quality games is a lot like the visuals: if you play a game designed for 24-bit color on a 16-bit display, you're going to be missing the intention of the artist. The same goes for sound, artists would be using good equipment, and the sounds will have subtle nuances you can't hear without at least decent audio equipment. If you use the $5 speakers that came with your PC, you just won't have the same experience.

I was upset when these came out, my HD-650s aren't top of the line anymore.. That said, man are the 800s ugly.

My SR-80s are very good headphones for the money (~$100) and rival the HD650s. One of these day's I'm going to listen to a set of RS2is, one of their upper-mid level headphones.

Three middle-aged women talking non-stop about their kids, their husbands, their soon-to-be deceased parents, and did I mention their fucking kids?

Thank God for Mr. Sennheiser and his noise-canceling headphones.

> annoy the hell out of fellow passengers...

Yeah, because either :

1) it's only just loud enough that you can't quite make it out but it's 'oh so familiar' that it keeps you guessing the song all day. I hate that!

2) it's loud enough that you *can* make it out, but it's something crap, but catchy, and you embarrass yourself by singing it all day at inappropriate times. I *really* hate that!

Closed back headphones should be mandatory on public transport. These are my favourites :

http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_eng.nsf/root/502188

and these aren't half bad either :

http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail.asp?transid=502103 ..but for sound isolation, I haven't found better than these :

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/PersonalMonitorSystems/us_pro_SCL3_content

fitted with these :

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/Accessories/us_pro_PA750_content

I find them very comfortable too.

And no, I don't know how to spell Sennheiser.

If you want a decent headset, get a Sennheiser... For the same price you will get much much better sound quality. Even TFA mentions this particular headset isn't great for music.

What makes this a "gaming" headset? The bundled microphone? The carrying bag? The price? The fact that it comes in a box?

(Links at the bottom)

I've been using a cheap pair of Sony behind-the-ear's at work for a while. Easy to put on, decent sound (little muddy), cheap, and doesn't look like my other phones. At home it's Sennheiser HD497's, incredible sound (good alternative to Grado SR-60's I hear). The 497's are about 60-70, and they're open design so you can basic hear everything around you not muffled at all. Same with the sony behind-the-ears, you can still hear around you and you can simply pause the music to hear people.

I tried the Sennheiser PXC-250's, same physical design as the 100's but with active noise cancelling. Even with the noise canceling *off*, the phone physically blocked out a lot of noise (surprisingly). Good for music, bad for coworkers.

Personally, I'd got with behind the ear Koss porta pro's (KSC55's probably). They're slightly less intrusive than over-the-head phones, that series of koss's are supposed to be the best bargain phones (ie. under $30), and they're really easy to pull down to your neck when a coworker wants to talk. That's important, as at my 1 year review one of my feedback from coworkers was "he's always wearing his headphones". Programming for 8-10 hours straight in the only office in the building without a window of any kind? Heck yes. I'm still going to wear phones, but I have to be careful not to appear "unapproachable" to the higher-ups. Aww, screw it. I'm doing important work, they don't need to disturb me.

(I think it's outside the scope of the OP's requirements, but I can't say enough about the HD497's. Music sounds incredibly different listened with those compared to cheap phones, cars, computer speakers, etc. There's just a whole lot more there that you never realized. Love it, I want to listen to music all over again just in these phones.)

Sony MDR-G52LP's, $20, ok but not as good as the Koss (so I've heard). Little muddy.

Koss KSC55, ~$20, behind the ear, titanium diaphram, cheap and good

Grado SR-60's, ~$70, bigger over the head, "best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

Sennheiser HD497's, ~$70, more bigger over the head, "the other best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

*Don't pay attention to frequency response numbers, 20-20000hz. Means nothing. Go try some phones, goto the Apple store and plug your personal ipod into the bose triports and listen to something you know well. If you're not rushed, you might notice a big difference.

I got the PXC250 though. Compared to the Bose noise canceling headphones, they're pretty cheap, and they won't hurt your ears nearly as much. (Plus, they collapse in on themselves making it possible to carry them in your pocket.) I've had these for over a year and the active noise cancelling really does work. The unit will get rid of the low rumbling noises (air conditioners, motors, etc) but doesn't touch most other sounds (like keyboards.) You'll end up listening to your music at a lower volume with the noise cancelling on than off, and you can hear things around you in your environment. I'd recommend waiting a bit to get a pair of headphones with this feature.

Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."

Excellent points, and for those that don't quite have 250 bucks to spend you could always get the 280 Pros http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail .asp?transid=004974 It's what I use at home for watching movies and listening to music and it's astounding how much ambient noise they block out. When they are running I can't hear my air conditioner or dishwasher in my apartment. When my cellphone rings, I only know it goes off by the backlight lighting up the room. Because I can't hear the ambient noise I don't have to turn the volume up to half of what I used to have it on, plus the sound quality is astounding. This is my first set of really nice headphones and I'd by another if anything were to ever happen to these.

"I only hope that ENT doctors and researchers continue to find ways to repair the ear's mechanisms and perhaps develop nerve repair techniques or we're gonna have a huge population of elderly deaf people 50 years from now (with commensurate increase in volume of PA systems etc.)"

The solution for me here was obvious: I have a set of custom molded earplugs to save my ears. They're normally kept in my car, so that I can have them readily available for whenever I do or find myself in any of the following activities:

* Mow the lawn
* Go to the movies
* Get in an airplane (getting "ON" an airplane is very dangerous, especially when it takes off...)
* Get in a really loud car (not mine, which is retty quiet)
* I find myself with too much noise around me

The earplugs fit inside my ear and are flesh colored, so they are fairly unobtrusive and very small; to date, no one has ever noticed (or at leat commented) my wearing them. They reduce the volume by a little more than 20 decibels and easily fit in a plastic container about the size of a 35mm film container. They cost me $70.00, with no insurance coverage needed. They are fairly comfortable; I have found I can wear them for about two hours before my ears feel irritated.

It's one of the best investments I ever made. As a result I still have my full range of hearing (having had a hearing test in the last year to check on it), despite the mild whine of tinitus at the 10-12KhZ range I often hear in a very quiet room. I'm sure it would have been much worse had I not used my plugs over the past six years.

So if loud noises bother you, consider having a good set of comfortable, small custom earplugs made for you.

Also if you do wear headphones, consider the following:

* keep the volume at the lowest level at which you can comfortably hear it.
* use over the ear headphones, not bud style
* buy the BEST headphones you can afford; better headphones will have less distortion and better, clearer sound re-production at lower sound levels, so you will not need as high a soud range to get comparable sound output (i.e. you can keep the volume lower for the same equivilant sound level and what you hear will sound better).
I myself use Sennheiser HD595's, which retail for $285.00

http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail .asp?transid=newHD-3
but they can be found around $250.00.

You could also buy noise cancelling headphones for around the same amount.

A basic rule to interpreting the frequency response figures that manufacturers cite for headphones is that they're all lies of omission. More precisely, they involve setting a really low threshold for what counts as "response" at any given frequency.

So sure, your headphone's manufacturer put your headphones in a testing setup, and demonstrated that the headphones produced some output at, say, 15 Hz. But, what's the level of that output compared to the level of the output for an equally strong electric signal at, say, 1 KHz? Is it 3dB lower? (That'd be really good, but I seriously doubt that one.) 6dB? (That wouldn't be bad at all.) 9dB? (That's not good, really.) 12dB? (Ridiculous.) The bigger that number, the less the cited figures mean; and you see that many manufacturers don't bother to mention the tolerance for their cited figures.

For example, Sennheiser's HD650, their top of the line dynamic headphone, is listed as "10 - 39,500 Hz (-10dB)." These guys, in practice, can definitely put out a reasonable 30 Hz, and start to roll off down from there; you get some meaningful output in the 20Hz region, but it's definitely lower than in the midrange.

And this is from a set of headphones that retails for over $300. Did you spend that much on your headphones?

*grumbles* It's too late in the day for this..

I meant to say http://www.sennheiserusa.com/

I pressed the Z accidently before, and also should have checked the URL before I hit submit...

You mean Sennheiser?

I've owned the JBMM20 and the AV300 - the great-grandfather and grandfather of the AV700 - and I have to say that they're amazing pieces of technology. They run embedded firmware on the DSC25 that is compatible with linux so you can run Linux on it if you really want. The video playback on the AV300 is stunning, even at 352x240 resolution: you can read subtitles clear as day. It has decent quality sound (much better if you get a nicer pair of headphones like the Seinnheiser HD280 Pro), a bright lcd screen and 3-4 hours of video playback on the "Low Brightness" option which ironically is quite bright still. Oh yeah... and it plays DiVX

For anyone that's interested, don't even think about getting the bigger harddrive model. Both old and new models use standard 3.5" laptop harddrives, which means you can buy one off of PriceWatch and slap it in there. Just format it with a FAT boot sector first and you're good to go.

Exactly. If you want something inexpensive to block unwanted noise, try a pair of Sennheiser HD202s. You can pick them up for around US$20 if you look in the right places. (Amazon, for instance, has them in that price range.)

Of course, if you want to pay more money, Sennheiser and Shure both have some very nice lines of expensive sealed headphones they'd love to sell you!

Boston too. Quite frankly, these days I hardly ever see earbuds on people that aren't the distinctive Apple white. I'd estimate I see at least two pairs of white earbuds on my 15 minute morning commute.

Which leads me to my next point: Please, for the love of god, educate these people on the benefit of better headsets. Tell them that an amazing set of Sennheiser's can be had for as low as 80 bucks, and show them how much better the sound quality is. Heck, show them how much better the sound quality is from a 40 dollar pair of Sony cups at Target. But show them! These people don't realize how much better their music can sound for just a few dollars more. Those white earbuds, while better than some, are still terrible. Get them on real headsets!

That the iPod is so popular isn't bad at all. But that we see so many white iPod earbuds despite the fact that sound quality can be worlds better for 10% more is a downright shame.

The transducer for all three is the same, part no. 49294. I spoke with a bit too little qualification as there are other subtle differences such as in the acoustic chamber between 580/600 and 650, but still not the sort of thing most sane people would plunk down an extra hundred bucks or so for :)

Except ogg doesn't sound any better than mp3 above 128kbps

Sorry, I get worked up when people equate "Bose" with "good"... maybe you had good experiences with Bose equipment.

What a deal, at only $14,900 US!

Put me down for 3!