"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight"

December 12, 2018 12:29 AM

Headphone people of Metafilter, I need your best recommendations and experiences for headphone purchases . Limitations follow.

I gazed upon a sea of headphones and suffered choice paralysis and sticker shock. I reviewed what was listed in the Wirecutter and previous Askmefi questions. Some of the issues include a shortage of the Wirecutter and Amazon recommendations; age of previous askmefi questions and sticker shock...so much sticker shock. Anyway, here are the things:

* Need noise cancelling for me. I walk a great deal and Sydney has some seriously loud streets and I also take long flights.
* Need headphones for an 9 year old and an adult sized 11 year old. I would prefer something that controls the decibels, noise reduction/cancelling and fit their heads. Did I mention robust? The children should be product testers with the level of robustness needed. The children are sensitive to sound so the need for noise reduction.
* headphones for special needs child who is adult sized. Definitely noise sensitive though for some reason likes EDM to be loud. Anyway, noise reduction would be a definite plus.
* Open to wired and wireless
* budget: I would prefer going below $50 for the kids because of the robustness issue and less than $200 for me. I am willing to do more but the price really needs good justification so spending $400+ for just one seems a stretch to me.

Insights, advice, personal experiences, links or suggestions welcome since I am cramming so many headphone requests. I am also open to earbuds for adult if you want to pitch that.

posted by jadepearl to Shopping (8 answers total)

I bought these Conambo wireless over-ear headphones for a transpacific flight, since my fancy Sennheiser ones are wired and my phone no longer has a headphone jack, and also they have noise cancellation. I'm pretty happy with them. The noise cancelling was by no means perfect but absolutely noticeable on an airplane and much appreciated. I mostly like to listen to classical opera, soul funk, indie vocalists and liquid trap and the headphones did a fine job on most of them, although maybe a little tinny on the upper range for vocals. They were comfortable for hours on my flight and fold up fine, hold a charge nicely and seem way more expensive than the 50ish USD I paid for them. I am not sure that they could withstand children level destruction attempts, but they're fine being jammed and packed into bags and slept on.
posted by Mizu at 2:04 AM on December 12, 2018

I got these for my kids, it's a skooch over your budget but very close. Noise blocking is good, and they are robust.

For cheap noise cancelling look at the Taotronics range. It's not Bose performance or Sony for that matter, but it's not that price, either.

I'm not sure if you've used noise-cancelling before? They are good for flight noises, i.e. long, steady, bass dominant. Not so good for traffic noises, unpredictable noises like on the street etc. Passive noise reduction that essentially blocks everything is better for that.

Hope this helps,
posted by smoke at 2:25 AM on December 12, 2018

I don't understand why people always first turn to active noise cancellation when they want to block out noise. It's expensive. It doesn't seem to help with common types of noise.

I'd start with passive isolation: there are headphones that look more like earmuffs that are designed for people working with noisy equipment. Or there are earbuds that fit into your ear canal like earplugs.

(Disclaimer: I've only ever used the latter, and I'm no expert on any of this.)

(No expert here either, but on average I doubt headphone users are more isolated from street noise than drivers inside cars. Worry about crossing at appropriate places and times, and looking first. I'm more worried about the loud EDM. If you haven't already, please check that everyone's listening at safe levels. Headphones *can* do permanent hearing damage.)
posted by bfields at 7:02 AM on December 12, 2018

No expert here either, but on average I doubt headphone users are more isolated from street noise than drivers inside cars. Worry about crossing at appropriate places and times, and looking first.

People in cars are in cars and have airbags, seatbelts, and a rollover structure. Also, they’re not the questioner’s kids. You can work on defensive walking all you like, but kids are kids and subject to distraction. So are adults, but they’re entitled to risk life and limb as they wish.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:12 AM on December 12, 2018

sticker shock

Active noise canceling is a moderately sophisticated thing and so anything good is going to cost some money. Beware of products that advertise themselves as noise isolating or passive noise canceling - they just mean the muffs cut down on some noise, which is fine but generally not a premium feature.

I would prefer going below $50 for the kids because of the robustness issue

I have a pair of the predecessor to the $50USD Audio Technica noise canceling headphones and they're ... OK for the price point, but they're a bit flimsy and I wouldn't expect them to hold up to abuse from kids.

At that price point I'd skip looking for anything with active cancellation or high quality sound and go for something with moderately robust construction and some relatively beefy muffs to reduce outside noise.

Ear buds can offer better noise isolation but my instinct is that kids might be more tempted to crank them up to hearing damaging levels than headphones.

I doubt headphone users are more isolated from street noise than drivers inside cars.

The difference is that if I don't hear another car while driving and pull out in front of them, they hit my car whereas if I'm walking and step out in front of them, they hit me.
posted by Candleman at 7:22 AM on December 12, 2018

Just to provide some clarity (ha), the children need noise canceling and audio for flights and school. They already have earmuffs (industrial) for really loud classroom environments. I, the adult, need noise canceling/noise isolating for flights and walks. The flights are long between Australia and anywhere else if that is helpful. So no child endangerment is involved.
posted by jadepearl at 12:48 PM on December 12, 2018

I’ll second the idea that at a low budget you are better off getting some midrange over the ear headphones (eg Sony MDR 7506 or the like) than cheap noise cancelling ones. Almost as effective and much better sounding with the NC off.
posted by q*ben at 7:38 PM on December 12, 2018

I use MDR 7056's all day and like them, but I don't think they're designed to provide much noise isolation. Also, compared to typical earbuds they have a relatively heavy coiled cord that I think would be awkward for walks.

I was thinking of something of something like this or this. (No idea whether those are any good, that was just the result of searching around Amazon for something that made actual claims about isolation with db noise reduction numbers.)
posted by bfields at 12:04 PM on December 13, 2018