Audiophiles and Travelers, Noise Cancelling, Bose QC35 Vs Sony MDR 1000x

It's rather interesting and worth a bit of Googling later... the question of isolation vs active noise cancelling.

I remember seeing not all that long ago a show with a train air horn going up against a new kind of material that effectively absorbed sound waves and converted them to heat.

Wonder if those kinds of material would make sense in headphones.

I guess the isolation effect is always there, and can be quite strong with even simple in-ear headphones that act a bit like earplugs. Actual earplugs work better though, perhaps it's even possible to use earplugs combined with regular headphones cranked up really loud (though this would be annoying to anyone around you).

What's considered a long flight also depends quite a bit i suppose. To me 4 hours isn't really a long flight, about right to get in the air, watch a movie, have a meal, maybe listen to some music and be landing already. Unless at night i don't really need any noise cancelling gear for that.

It's different with longer (6 hours plus) flights especially at night when you want to sleep and the noise just keeps you up. For some odd reason i sleep a lot better on (even very loud) busses and trains than i do on airplanes - no idea why exactly, perhaps it's the pitch of the sound, the air or something like that.

InfinitusEquitas said:

Last time I was there, met surprisingly few americans actually. The long flight definitely puts people off from visiting south asia. Tons and tons of people from china, australia, and then europe.

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I must say that most americans i meet in SE asia are either living there as expats or on a long trip, not people that fly over for a two week or shorter holiday. Perhaps price factors more into that than distance: Flying to say singapore or jakarta is not much further from the US west coast that it is from western europe. The difference is that there is land in between most of the way from europe, and middle eastern carriers like emirates, qatar or even egyptair are fierce competition to direct flights.

In the high season (northern summer) tickets are still expensive, but in the off season you can get realistic flights from western europe to bangkok under $600, and all the way to singapore for $700 or so. The cheaper ones always have a stop somewhere (dubai, qatar, doha, sometimes even in china), but compared to $1000-ish direct flights are often a good option.

The middle eastern airlines are more often getting wifi on board as well (500 mb for $1 on emirates!) so you can enjoy streaming services in flight, which would probably make having some good headphones worth more.

InfinitusEquitas said:

It's rather interesting and worth a bit of Googling later... the question of isolation vs active noise cancelling.

I remember seeing not all that long ago a show with a train air horn going up against a new kind of material that effectively absorbed sound waves and converted them to heat.

Wonder if those kinds of material would make sense in headphones.

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Interesting material you speak of =.
I am aware that sound can/does in fact heat the air, especially at the high frequencies on it's own accord without the aid of any materials. sound moves molecules in the air, and the higher the freq the more energy is attenuated into the medium. Ultrasonic transducers are great examples of this effect.


Active noise cancelling injects the same background noise with an inverted amplitude into the headphone effectively cancelling out everything but what you are listening to in theory. This works upto a point. Low Freq is cancelled out well (low rumbling inside a jet/ road noise of a car... etc) but higher frequencies are almost impossible to cancel out. The active noise cancelling circuit also distorts some of the audio you are listening to, which is why most of these headphones sound tinny and lacking in lower frequency response.

High frequency sounds above 1KHz tend to cancel and reinforce unpredictably from many directions.

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There certainly are limitations to what it can do, mostly for higher frequencies.

To cancel a noise you need to apply the inverse in such a manner that it arrives as the inverse -on your eardrum-, not somewhere randomly in the space between the headphone speaker and the eardrum.

This gets increasingly difficult with frequency as there is quite a long path between the headphone and your eardrum, and it's exact length and form vary between people quite a bit.

Downside of it all is that it can cancel sounds that are not that annoying to begin with (like the diesel engine chopping away in a bus) while it can do little about the whining noise of 4 jet engines around you that chances phase with a minute movement of your head.

Benm, that's not too bad $1 for 500mb of data! Actually, that's amazing! 500mb is at least a couple hours worth of YouTube videos and online gaming so that would for sure make the time go by fast!

-Alex

Oh man. I was really just tempted to buy the MDR 1000X, but I decided not to since bluetooth 5.0 was announced. Best noise cancelling I've ever experienced though.

Audio quality also seems minimally distorted. I can definitely hear the difference caused by what I assume to be noise cancelling on Bose headsets. It's pretty annoying the NC can't be turned off with Bose either.

I don't own the headset, but I've heard it can have issues with Bluetooth multipoint.

I decided not to spend the money since Bluetooth 5.0 should really bring a lot of audio transmission quality improvements. If only there was a WiFi headset. That said, I still really wish I had better noise cancelling headphones for my upcoming plane flight.

I should have the MDR 1000X later today and will put them through their paces over the weekend. I am not all displeased with the Bose in the meantime, and actually enjoy using them while driving because of how much more they cut down on road/traffic noise.

In an idea world we'd have the ability to just use a slider and evenly cancel noise across all frequencies, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon. I confess the most annoying sound to me BY FAR is the sound of a baby crying.

@Seoul Lasers, the show is called Showdown of the Unbeatables, and it's on US netflix. The materical is Soundproofing | Soundproofing Materials. They have the actual video on their site. Very cool stuff imo. Assuming I'm ever really rich, I'd love to have a fully soundproofed house, or at least some areas of it, including the windows.

In addition to the headset I am also taking these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015IQ6HI4/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=A2R5UKCLECW4MJ&th=1 and some leighton earplugs that have a 33db reduction rating.

On my last flight I did actually use a combination of earplugs, and noisecancelling headphones (the noisehush ones), and the result was pretty good. The guy sitting next to me also had headphones in the whole time, so I doubt when I blasted musing and audiobooks it bothered him much.

Update, got the Sony MDR 1000X, and WOW. I will do side by side testing, but so far the Sony's have blown me away. Not only that but they feel like a far more technologically developed headset, with a variety of options that the Bose simply do not offer.

They are equally comfortable, though the sony headset seems more substantial.
The bose seem to have better passive isolation.
The Sony's are seem to win out in how much noise is being cancelled out.
There is a slight hiss with both headsets that I can detect, when the headset is not actually playing any audio. In this regard, the bose seem to have less of it vs the sony, but the sony do better overall.

The only major upsides to the Bose so far are that it can be charged and used at the same time. The Sony's can't. Going to use both a lot this weekend and make a decision.

Rivem said:

Oh man. I was really just tempted to buy the MDR 1000X, but I decided not to since bluetooth 5.0 was announced. Best noise cancelling I've ever experienced though.

Audio quality also seems minimally distorted. I can definitely hear the difference caused by what I assume to be noise cancelling on Bose headsets. It's pretty annoying the NC can't be turned off with Bose either.

I don't own the headset, but I've heard it can have issues with Bluetooth multipoint.

I decided not to spend the money since Bluetooth 5.0 should really bring a lot of audio transmission quality improvements. If only there was a WiFi headset. That said, I still really wish I had better noise cancelling headphones for my upcoming plane flight.

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Yes, I had heard about BT5.0. There are some interesting possibilities down the road with it. Apparently speed has taken a major boost as well as range.

Intriguing possibilities with BT5.0... more I read the more I wonder how quickly it will be adopted.

I expect we won't see it until June at the earliest. I'm hoping with 5.0 it will be possible to finally, easily provide audio to multiple bt enabled devices... maybe even with some form of backwards compatibility.

Speaking of BT tech, it seems Apple may have oversold their crap again. The airbuds are delayed.

Hap said:

Benm, that's not too bad $1 for 500mb of data! Actually, that's amazing! 500mb is at least a couple hours worth of YouTube videos and online gaming so that would for sure make the time go by fast!

-Alex

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I'm not sure the offer is still the same, but last year i flew on emirates and got 30 mb for free, and an additional 500 mb for $1 on board.

At that time the wifi only worked on the amsterdam-dubai legs, not dubai to bangkok/denpasar though. Service seems to be expanding though, if they keep this up i'm sure it will win them customers.

Another thing these middle eastern airlines are doing right is not slapping on any fees for one item of checked in luggage (20 or 32 kg, depending on which one). I don't usually take a huge amount of luggage at all, but having some checked in is nice as i prefer to take some liquids along that are not accepted as carry on (like contact lens solution, the thing that started the whole ordeal).

In some cases you just want to bring products you are familiar with, especially when it comes to stuff you put in your eyes.

InfinitusEquitas said:

I expect we won't see it until June at the earliest. I'm hoping with 5.0 it will be possible to finally, easily provide audio to multiple bt enabled devices... maybe even with some form of backwards compatibility.

Speaking of BT tech, it seems Apple may have oversold their crap again. The airbuds are delayed.

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Yeah. I'm excited for BT5.0 since audio devices might be able to finally forgo compression, and more range would be nice.

Honestly though, a new WiFi standard that can encompass peripherals as well as conventional networking might be necessary in the future if BT's bandwidth keeps getting bumped up. We keep seeing cameras and speakers that go with WiFi connections simply for the bandwith. It'd be nice to easily interface with these without the need for a home network or disconnecting from your internet.

Then again, maybe 5.0 will be just enough bandwidth and more convenient for these uses now.

Now those airpods... They definitely seem cool, but they seem to be a bit pricey compared to very good alternatives. Plus, all that trouble just to get rid of the wire between them? I'd actually rather have the wire for situations where one might fall out and get lost.

InfinitusEquitas said:

I expect we won't see it until June at the earliest. I'm hoping with 5.0 it will be possible to finally, easily provide audio to multiple bt enabled devices... maybe even with some form of backwards compatibility.

Speaking of BT tech, it seems Apple may have oversold their crap again. The airbuds are delayed.

Click to expand...

hehe, about Apple... I might be a fan of their OS. MacOS Sierra, but wow talk about a company that has really oversold their hardware. They are turning rapidly into a B&O (Bang and Olufsen)/ Form over function. The earpods are such an example of this. Their new Macbook pros are great (hardware specs) but expensive as per usual and virtually all of their high end 15" MBP have faulty/glitchy AMD graphics cards. Most have had to be returned due to sporadic freezing on high graphic workloads.
This makes me plenty angry as a long time Mac user. They should have stuck with Nvidia and their previous, previous (17" Unibody) MBP design which actually worked.

I like moddable computers. I also like moddable computers that can run Windows 10, Unbuntu 16.10 and MacOS all without having to virtualize OS's.
I like bootloaders and I like being able to choose my hardware.

I am having an extremely difficult time picking a favorite between these headsets. Both of them are extremely good.

In terms of noise cancellation, they are about the same, although the Sony does better in an office environment, especially after running the EQ optimizer, which seems to make some minute adjustments, and also reset the headset into the most appropriate noise cancellation mode (apparently it has 3 that it automatically switches between).

Both are very comfortable, but the bose definitely wins in terms of being the slicker option, and seems to disappear from perception almost immediately once it's put on.

I think in terms of noise cancellation, the Sony are the winner, except for in a windy environment.

In terms of controls, and features, the Sony is the winner hands, down and I love the ability to just cup the ear to turn down the music, and turn off the noise cancelling. The touch controls aren't perfect, but imo, they are the best thing yet devised for a headset. I'm tempted to take both on my trip now.

Wireless might actually not be the best thing to use on airplanes, especially if it becomes very popular.

I'm not entirely sure how it would work out if all passengers chose to use BT or wifi headsets at the same time, but i can see some problems there. Since most jet aircraft make reasonably good farady cages they also keep signals in, boucing them around a couple of times before getting absorbed.

Low energy bluetooth basically has 60 channels, which could be problematic considering the number of people on an airliner. It will do channel hopping but that will not save you once bandwidth gets really saturated and you keep losing more and more packages from interference.

Dubai to Atlanta, 16.5 hours was painful for me.