Logitech vs. Bose Noise Cancelling headphones

These are my very un-scientific first impressions of the new inexpensive Logitech noise cancelling headphones vs. the Bose Quiet Comfort II
In most cases the Logitech’s were nearly as good as my Bose. I give the Bose a slight nod with the higher pitch noise like the TS with blade raised, dust collector, and router.
I couldn’t tell any appreciable difference between the two in the lower pitched machines like my WoodMaster, air compressor, and heater.
The Bose were a little more comfortable but required a little fidgeting to get there. The Logitech’s fit over the ear very easily.
Musically, I liked the crisp, clean sound of the Bose better. The Logitech’s have a little too much bass for my listening pleasure but overall, still sound very good.

Value wise, the $49.99 Logitech are the clear winner over the $299.00 Bose.

I will be saving my Bose for the airplane and whenever I just want to kick back and listen to music. For shopwork and yardwork, the Logitech’s are the clear winner.

YMMV


$49.99 Logitech: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-9804...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1200963947&sr=8-1

299.00 Bose: http://www.amazon.com/QuietComfort®...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1200963891&sr=8-2



I don’t know how to do the tabbing thing in vBulletin so I did a simple screen capture.

What about the Peltor's? Another co-worker just bought a pair of those and was bragging about it today no less.

Travis Johnson said:

What about the Peltor's? Another co-worker just bought a pair of those and was bragging about it today no less.

Click to expand...

Travis, I'm just comparing the two that I have.
The Bose are considered the Cadillac in most consumer grade circles. The Logitech’s compare very well.

Good information! I will be watching this as I looked at some headsets today but have not really got into comparing them.

Hmmm I can see it now some kid wearing those things hit by a car while wearing those things as he couldn't hear it coming or people yelling at him to get out of the way. Sorry for pointing out a negetive but that is one thing that just came to mind. I understand that there are head phones out there that are noise senstive and actually start working when the noise hits a certain level. when They are not on activated or the noise is below a dangerous level they turn off. I personally thing those would be something better than ones that cancel out all external noise. I can't remember where I saw them maybe someone else here does.

Drew, neither of these comes close to cancelling out all noise; you can still hear conversations or a machine running. Of course, if you have your iPod cranked way up you’re not going to hear that truck coming anyway.

The Ipods are a serious problem with snowmobiles. We have always shared our trails with the cross-country-skiers, but now every one of them wears Ipods. Before they would hear you coming and get out of the way, now they don't hear you until you are right up on them. Sometimes this means over hills or on blind corners someone will get killed at some point.

As a side note, my co-worker loves the noise-canceling earphones on the gun range. Before he could not hear the range commands with his earmuffs on. Now he can hear the commands and still muffle the report of the rifle.

Travis Johnson said:

The Ipods are a serious problem with snowmobiles. We have always shared our trails with the cross-country-skiers, but now every one of them wears Ipods. Before they would hear you coming and get out of the way, now they don't hear you until you are right up on them. Sometimes this means over hills or on blind corners someone will get killed at some point.

As a side note, my co-worker loves the noise-canceling earphones on the gun range. Before he could not hear the range commands with his earmuffs on. Now he can hear the commands and still muffle the report of the rifle.

Click to expand...

Very good advice Travis. But a word of caution: do get a pair of good earphone/muffs. I have some El Cheapos from Harbor Freight, simply do not work.

As for the music noise-cancelling earphones, Bob Schwabach in his column 'On Computers' did a review of some he liked recently. I don't recall what brand he reccomended as things music are of much interest to me. His back columns can be read at:
http://www.oncomp.com/index.html

Bruce Page said:

Drew, neither of these comes close to cancelling out all noise; you can still hear conversations or a machine running. Of course, if you have your iPod cranked way up you’re not going to hear that truck coming anyway.

Click to expand...

Another point to make in regards to this idea. Is that with hearing protection isn't it counter productive to add noise inside the ear protection to prevent you from hearing noise outside the ear protection? I have already lost over 1/2 my hearing to loud music and work related noise and I wear a good set of peltors all the time at work now and in the shop. I just can't see the benifit to these personal headphone protectors aside from getting rid of the boom boxes for the drywallers.

Bruce,

I just got some (different brand- GE) from the despot. $30, and they're great (not bose, by a long shot, but they do work). Noise cancel is pretty good, and they plug into my el cheapo mp3 player. It means I can download podcast lectures, and listen while I work. This makes my shop time MUCH more enjoyable. Listening right now to an 8 hour history of Rome, just finished a history of the Byzantine emperors. Frank may not like music, but I'd bet he'd like the military history podcast. I used to use worktunes, but Doorlink hated them, because I couldn't hear her talking. Now I can hear her, no problem...

My father says he ruined his hearing using a router, and I believe it. Everyone should be using something like this, whether they're listening to something else or not. $30 vs. not being able to hear much in the future... doesn't seem like a hard choice.

Thanks,

Bill

I'm afraid I take the cheap option. I listen to audiobooks all day and just pop a pair of normal buds loose inside normal ear defenders. The volume is no higher than listening to TV in the living room so its doing the same amount of hearing damage but the content is generally doing a lot less thinking damage than the gogglebox.

I use this cheap and cheerful technique because during hot weather I change the ear defenders every hour on teh hour to reduce heat build up and having multiple pairs of $10 muffs is a lot more manageable than if they were 5 - 10 times the price.

I tried the shhoting muffs which have a circuit that detects loud volumes and shuts off the ambient mike but I found that they emphasised low level mechanic frquencies (screwdrivers clanking in a drawer type stuff) uncomfortably loud and didn't do a great job of high level noise. I may just have been unlucky to pick a bad model but they also suffer the disadvantage of cost.

Whatever, if you exposure is any more than brief and occasional then you should be wearing something on or in your ears.

Bill - got any good URL's to share for podcasts - sounds like the kind of stuff that I go for but I have never found a good source of quality material - I use www.audible.com for audiobooks

Bill Lantry said:

Bruce,

I just got some (different brand- GE) from the despot. $30, and they're great (not bose, by a long shot, but they do work). Noise cancel is pretty good, and they plug into my el cheapo mp3 player. It means I can download podcast lectures, and listen while I work. This makes my shop time MUCH more enjoyable. Listening right now to an 8 hour history of Rome, just finished a history of the Byzantine emperors. Frank may not like music, but I'd bet he'd like the military history podcast. I used to use worktunes, but Doorlink hated them, because I couldn't hear her talking. Now I can hear her, no problem...

My father says he ruined his hearing using a router, and I believe it. Everyone should be using something like this, whether they're listening to something else or not. $30 vs. not being able to hear much in the future... doesn't seem like a hard choice.

Thanks,

Bill

Click to expand...

Actually, Bill, I like quiet. When I'm writing or in the workshop, I really like no sounds at all around me. Sometimes I just wear my earplugs all day, miss phone calls and everything. If good friends call, they have my cell and that vibrates.

Drew Watson said:

[...]with hearing protection isn't it counter productive to add noise inside the ear protection to prevent you from hearing noise outside the ear protection?

Click to expand...

Interesting question.

My understanding is that sound is a compression wave. To cancel noise (as opposed to just muffling it) wouldn't you have to do something that results in NO compression (above a certain pressure) reaching the ear? Yes, the canceling wave would have its own compression pattern, but the end result should be a mutually-canceling effect.

Any audio engineers/PHDs here?

Kerry Burton said:

Interesting question.

My understanding is that sound is a compression wave. To cancel noise (as opposed to just muffling it) wouldn't you have to do something that results in NO compression (above a certain pressure) reaching the ear? Yes, the canceling wave would have its own compression pattern, but the end result should be a mutually-canceling effect.

Any audio engineers/PHDs here?

Click to expand...

Not an audio engineer by a long shot, but I do understand how noise cancellation technology works. You're on the right track about the wave. An easy way to visualize it is to think of a speaker on your stereo. If you've ever watched the speaker cone, you'll see it goes both in and out. When it goes in and out fast enough, our ears perceive the resulting vibration as a sound. If, in the same room, you were to have another speaker doing the exact opposite movement -- one going out when the other is going in, and vice versa -- theoretically you would hear no sound at all. The "out" waves get canceled by the "in" waves. Of course this is a gross oversimplification...the room would have to be acoustically perfect and the tones from the speakers absolutely pure with no other noise, but in general terms, the ins and outs cancel each other. It's as if you have two sounds...the original sound and its exact opposite sound.

Noise canceling headphones work in a similar way. They have a "microphone" that monitors the sounds around you, and when it senses a loud or abrupt sound, the headphones produce the "opposite" sound instantly and automatically, thus canceling the original sound.

To address Drew's concern about adding sound over noise to cover it up, the noise canceling headphones are doing something more like "erasing" the sounds instead of adding to them.

Vaughn McMillan said:

To address Drew's concern about adding sound over noise to cover it up, the noise canceling headphones are doing something more like "erasing" the sounds instead of adding to them.

Click to expand...

There ya go; that's what I was trying to say.

Frank Fusco said:

Actually, Bill, I like quiet. When I'm writing or in the workshop, I really like no sounds at all around me. Sometimes I just wear my earplugs all day, miss phone calls and everything. If good friends call, they have my cell and that vibrates.

Click to expand...

That is how I am. I like to wear my ear protection all the time, whether I have equipment running or not. Just like the quiet. I can still hear the classical music in the background, but just slightly. It helps me think clearer, especially when I cut a board too short and I'm in the process of giving myself an stern talking to.

After doing all of the research that I could stand I decided on the Audio Technica ATH-ANC7. A bit expensive but way, way under the cost of the Boses. Reported by one commerical tester as good as the Boses without the advertising cost. The only negative that I could find was that there was some sound leakage but we will see. I need mine to use close to others without bothering them with what I am doing so if there is much leakage it could be a problem but I am not a high volume guy so it shoud be fine----I think. None of the units were really good at canceling high pitch sounds but very good at the mid and low pitches.

http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technic...-Headphones/dp/B000OMKR8E/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/f9450db308d97785/index.html

A good explanation on how the noise canceling works:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/noise-canceling-headphone3.htm

"Bill - got any good URL's to share for podcasts - sounds like the kind of stuff that I go for but I have never found a good source of quality material - I use www.audible.com for audiobooks"

Ian,

I've looked at audible.com, but Doorlink would absolutely kill me if I spent money there... any expenditures would be deducted from my already non-existant tool budget... Same thing goes for the teaching company (www.teach12.com) though they have a course on Dante I'd love to make into a "stealth purchase"

So I have to find stuff for free, and there's no shortage.

Absolutely my highest recommendation: Margaret Anderson's Modern European Civilization course at Berkeley http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978394

she is justifiably widely celebrated, but you'll want to skip the first 15 minutes of the first lecture, she gets a little parochial, especially if you're fond of Oxford...

The byzantine emperors course

http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=5440
also see
http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/
(same stuff, just a different way of getting it)

History of Rome:
http://thehistoryofrome.blogspot.com/
(this is not a professional historian, but he can tell a decent story)

Closer to (your) home, the RSA has an excellent series
http://www.rsa.org.uk/audio/
although much is dependant on that day's speaker, and I expect your standard american audience might start throwing tea in the harbor again if they heard some of them
of special interest: the black swan, only joking, the tiger that isn't, yes!.

The easiest way to get these is to use a podcast aggregator. I use Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/), then copy them over to my mp3 player.

Hope this helps,

Thanks,

Bill

Thanks Bill. I never even thought of University lectures as a source but now I do.