Slashdot Mirror
Headphones in Corporate Culture?
TheGreatOrangePeel asks: "In an ever increasing sea of white-earbuds in my office, I broke from the mainstream and recently purchased the iAudio X5 to help pass the downtime I experience behind cube walls. I've got a decent set of headphones, but recently I've discovered that being able to hear the rap-tap on the cube frame is sometimes a problem even with the volume cranked way down and considering how my current headphones are about ready for retirement anyway, I thought I would start shopping around for a new set. The problem is that most of mid priced headphones out there are designed to block out real world noise. The Sennheiser PX100 look like they may fit what I'm looking for, but I question the durability of folding headphones and I thought I would see what my peers on Slashdot prefer. What I'm looking for is a set of headphones with (1) good sound in a wide variety of music (2) in the $30-$99 range that (3) will let me hear the warnings of imminent attack at work by co-workers, and the alerts at my monthly LAN parties from allied gamers."
Grado SR-60s are the way to go for your requirements. They are, hands down, the best headphones available under $100. The only drawback is that they are open stage, so you can hear sounds around you, which is not so good for a metro or bus ride. But it sounds like that's an advantage rather than a drawback in your case. SR-60s will run you about $80 USD shipped. Oh, and don't succumb to the temptation to get the SR-80s just because they've got a higher model number. The 60s are far better for non-amp-driven listening.
Just plug a microphone in. Make sure it's sinsoid and not cartoid type, since sinsoid picks up sound in any direction.
Put on your headphones, then adjust the mic mix till you hear the desired amount of background noise.
You could also try some cube modding to find out when people are behind you!
The low-tech solution is to set up a rear-view mirror. But this is slashdot, so...
Write an app to lower your volume and/or play a sound when one of the following inputs are detected:
- your doorbell is pressed
- your touch-sensitive welcome mat is stood upon
- your door-mounted IR/laser beam is broken
- your cube-mounted microphone picks up an audio pattern that matches your "knock-knock" or "ahem" signature.
- your directional light sensor detects a shadow between it and a certain ceiling light above and outside of your door.
- your digital IR camera detects a body mass of close to 98.6 degrees fahrenheit standing in the doorway.
OK, so maybe ALL of these is overkill. But I haven't been snuck up on in years!!!
Monitor mirrors are for HR and Marketing drones... I much prefer the strategically-placed CDs (data side out) pinned to my cube wall and aimed the appropriate direction with additional pushpins behind them. It amazes me that nobody catches on until I specifically point it out to them.
Note that AOL CDs (while rarer these days) or any other free, pressed discs work best (as they are the shiniest); most CD-Rs don't work so well.