It is that time again where people all over the country are getting ready to head off (or back to) college. From time to time you may feel the need to get some peace and quiet, if not for studying then at least to block out the noises from across the hall so you can chill out and listen to your tunes. There are a lot of options out there and some of them are really expensive. I’ve found that the Direct Sound Extreme Isolation Headphones give you the biggest and best bang for the buck.
Like everybody else, I guess I was hoping to find a product that would totally block out all sound. Unfortunately you just can’t pull that off with earplugs or headphones. As a point of reference, an average conversation is about 60dB- 70dB, a telephone dial-tone is about 80dB, a whisper quiet library is about 30dB. I have looked all over the place to try to find the best solution for blocking out sound and it seems like the limit for headphones or earplugs is about 30dB. So, if you just put on the headphones and you aren’t playing any music, you are going to hear some background sound no matter what headphones you get. The Bose QuietComfort headphones appear to be the most popular headphones out there for blocking sound but they only reduce noise by about 17dB. They also cost around $300. For under $100 you can get the Direct Sound EX-29 headphones and they will block 29Db of sound - this is a 70% improvement over the Bose headphones.
So how do you get rid of the remaining noise? Well, I looked into that too. The folks at QuietHeadphones.com include a FREE white noise audio track that is one of the best audio tracks I have ever heard. It is a mixture of waterfall sounds and birds chirping. Their audio track also uses binaural beats to promote concentration and creativity. Binaural beats is a cool concept but, for the sake of this post, I just want to point out that the quality of the White Noise Track from QuietHeadphones.com is very impressive - especially for being free. You can pay $15 or more for tracks like this that don’t sound nearly as good. The White Noise Track is only available as a digital (MP3) download. It is not included on a CD in the box or anything but you can easily make your own CD if you feel so inclined. Most people will probably just put it on their iPod.
There are a couple other models of noise cancellation headphones available form QuietHeadphones.com. For example, they offer the Direct Sound EX-25 headphones as less expensive alternative to the EX-29 headphones. The EX-25 headphones block 25dB of noise which is only slightly less noise reduction but they will save you $40 and are a bit smaller in size. It turns out that the big difference between the two models is not the amount of noise reduction but the quality of the speakers in the ear cups. The EX-29 speakers are studio quality and really do sound great. The EX-25 speakers are more of a ‘home use’ version of the headphones. So if you wanted something to wear while you cut the grass or if you wanted headphones for traveling then you may want to get the smaller, less expensive model.
I have never before seen a company offer such an excellent warranty either. They will give you a 6 Month, 110% money back guarantee. This does two things for me. First, it gives me more than enough time to see if the headphones will meet my needs. Second, there is no way they could keep this up if people didn’t like the headphones. So people are clearly pretty satisfied with their purchase. There is also a speakerless version of headphones available but I didn’t try those out. I wanted something I could use with my iPod. So if you are looking for some great headphones at a great value, consider the noise cancellation headphones from QuietHeadphones.com.
