Active Noise-Canceling Headsets In Server Rooms?

An anonymous reader asks: "Recently I co-located our computer room to a temporary hosting facility. It's a big shop, with everything you could want, along with quite a high dB of background noise. I've no desire to wear those silly little yellow earplugs for several hours when I'm on site there, and standard headsets are such non-IT apparel. Given that technology is the cure to many of todays evils I was wondering if any people had experimented with active noise canceling headphones and has something to say about them. Does anyone use any active noise canceling headsets in a computer room or data facility, and if so how good are they?"

Comments

I use...

[casualsax3]

... this set at my datacenter:

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR-NC50-Noise-Cancelin g-Headphones/dp/B0007N55OQ/sr=8-1/qid=1163179023/r ef=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1893536-4549558?ie=UTF8&s=elect ronics

The customer reviews pretty much sum them up - I've even got one in there. They do a FANTASTIC job at filtering out our 500 servers, with or without playing music.

Re:Won't Help w/ Hearing Loss

[Control Group]

Uh...no.

If you're trying to cancel a 90dB wave, you generate the same 90dB wave, inverted. This means that every particle that receives a sound vibration in one direction receives an equal sound vibration in the opposite direction, resulting in a net movement of zero.

No vibration of the air means no vibration of the eardrum, which means no sound doing its mechanical damage to the moving pieces in your ear, which means no signal doing its neural damage inside your cochlea. Notably, earplugs do exactly the same thing to a lesser degree: they reduce the total transmission of vibration (that's what reducing the amplitude is, after all) into your ear canal.

In both cases, you haven't changed the total amount of energy reaching your ear, it's just that some portion of the kinetic energy (sound) that can damage your ear is now thermal energy that won't.

(Of course, noise-cancelling headphones have widely varying effectiveness in various regions of the audible sound spectrum, and won't do anything to prevent transmission of vibration from other parts of your body into your inner ear - but then, neither will softies)

Foam_earplugs++

[trip11]

You may not like the stupid yellow foam earplugs, but there are better alternitves. Check out http://earplugstore.stores.yahoo.net/profmusearpl1 .html for instance. The idea is that they are both more comforatble and allow you to hear better even while reducing the volume. All of the musicians I have mixed for LOVE them and I've tried them and found them to be much more comfortable than regular foam plugs. In fact, I find having a large headset on, is uncomfortable for long periods and adds strain to your neck. Check them out, they aren't too expensive. (and I have no affilation with this paticular store, it's just the first site I found)

Shure E2c

[xee]

These are the best portable headphones i've ever used. They're not active noise cancelling, because they're so damn good they dont need to be. Put them in and be amazed. I used them extensively in a large (and very loud) server room and was very VERY impressed with their noise cancelling abilities.

http://www.shure.com/PersonalAudio/Products/Earpho nes/ESeries/us_pa_E2c_content

Re:Shure E2c

[justinbach]

Seconded. You're dead on, xee...I've had my e2c-ns for about seven months now and I can't imagine ever going back to bulky, over-ear headphones or non-IEC earbuds. These headphones simply blew me away, both in terms of noise reduction, which is about as good as the best earplugs I've ever used, and sound quality, which is sick. I listen to lots of jazz but also music of other genres and have had no complaints about a weak low-end, which is an accusation often leveled at earbuds and IECs. In fact, the bass is perfect; it's crystalline (no distortion at all), and it doesn't overwhelm the midrange or treble.

As an added plus, the E2cs come with about 9 different styles of in-ear attachment you can wear depending on your ear size and comfort level; 3 different materials (foam, soft rubber, harder rubber) x 3 sizes each. Finding a perfect fit was really easy, and I now wear these buds for 8+ hours every day with zero discomfort. Also, I listen to my music much more quietly with these headphones than with others I've had previously, as the noise reduction provides for a much quieter soundstage.

They list for $110, I think, but you can do much better than that via Amazon Marketplace or Ebay (mine were $65 on Amazon).