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The noise was sucked out of my ears. It seemed like someone had vacuumed every little vibration out of the space I was sitting in.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
Plane Quiet noise-canceling headphones close off the outside world


Sept. 7, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   Modern life can be unkind to the music lovers among us. Finding a quiet place to listen is often impossible. One solution is to turn the problem inside out, creating a force field around your ears that cancels the noise trying to reach you.
   Sound like science fiction? Hardly. Noise-canceling devices have proven themselves for decades, but the technology was too expensive for consumer equipment until recently. Now, thanks to the reduced cost of advanced processor chips on which such devices are based, affordable noise-canceling headphones are here to stay.
   The "force field" in a noise-canceling device is the sound of the noise itself turned inside out. The sound is picked up by microphones on the outside of each earpiece of a headset and then put through a phase-reversal process in which sound waves emanating in one direction run smack up against cancellation waves heading in the other direction. (You know the old saying about an irresistible force meeting an immovable object? That's just what happens in the noise-canceling headset. These two sonic forces cancel each other out.)
   I had never even tried a noise-canceling headset until a few months ago. The idea just didn't seem worth pursuing. After all, my regular studio headphones, the kind that broadcasters often use, had done all the noise-elimination I'd ever wanted.
   Right?
   Remind me to ratchet up my humility quotient a little. I knew I was wrong the minute I put on a noise-canceling headset from Outside The Box, a company that specializes in unusual devices for travelers. The headset is called Plane Quiet, a pun suggesting an obvious use on noisy airplanes. It even comes with a dual-connector plug so you can use the Plane Quiet instead of those chintzy airline headsets.
   The Plane Quiet uses a single AA battery and has a convenient ON/OFF switch. The headset costs $80 if you buy it directly from www.planequiet.com.
   Getting acquainted with the noise-canceling headphones was an experience I'll never forget. The headset wasn't plugged in when I put it on, so I didn't expect to hear any music, of course. But what I heard was nothing at all.
   This may be hard to believe if you've never tried a noise-canceling device. The noise was sucked out of my ears. It seemed like someone had vacuumed every little vibration out of the space I was sitting in.
   Up until that moment, I had thought of noise-canceling headphones as things you use to listen to music in a noisy environment. But I had been transported into a sound-proof vault. I had a protective shield around my ears. No music was involved.
   Imp that I am, I clamped down the headset as tightly as I could so that it couldn't come loose, tucked the dangling connecting cord in my pocket and ran out to the barn and started up the tractor. For the next hour I mowed the lawn amid a peaceful hum instead of a raucous clatter. Some of the tractor noise was still there -- you get about 30 decibels of noise reduction with these headsets, which engineers count as a major drop in sound level -- but I heard none of the annoying chug-a-mug clanging of my mower. Everything was nicely muffled.
   I was a believer.
   Later, after the new wore off, I started using the Plane Quiet headset for its primary purpose, listening to music. In a way, I was even more surprised than I was when I used it just for noise elimination.
   I hadn't considered our computer room, where I do most of my listening, a noisy place. But every time I sat back with Vivaldi or the Stones, I heard details in the music I had missed before. And each time I took off the Plane Quiet headset after a long listening session, I felt jolted by the rush of noise in the room.
   How do they sound? They're good but not ultra-fi. They're not as faithful to the lowest bass notes as my studio headphones and don't quite have the same sparkle in the high treble, but I found the sound smooth and pleasant. The battery never seems to run out of power (I've had to replace mine only once), and the headphone cups are well shaped and comfortable.
   The only criticism I have concerns the length of the connecting cable. It needs to be longer. I added an extension cable from Radio Shack.