More headphone advice...

[tgfoo]

Ok, I already have a pair of Sony MDR-7506s and I love them. The problem is that my roommate can get noisey at times and it's hard to concentrate on music, let alone concentrate on anything at all. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a good pair on headphones that blocked out all, or at least most, external sounds, are fairly comfortable so I could wear them for a while, and good flat sound to them. Any suggestions?

[JonFairhurst]

You can't do much better than the 7506s. I believe that the Sennheiser HD 280 Pros block a bit more sound, but only by a couple of dB. Not enough to make a difference. You can get noise cancelling headphones, but they typically have terrible bass response, and they don't do well with transients - or roommates.

Maybe if you wear a foil hat, cite diabolic cantations and burn really crappy incense, you can drive *him* out of the room. ;)

-JF

[tgfoo]

So what you're saying is, don't cancel out the noise, cancel the source of the noise? ;) So then then there arne't really any good options to block out the sound? Other than convicing him to just be quite, which I've found is rather difficult at times...

[Tomke]

I've got a video from a Quincy Jones studio session. Quincy asks Miles Davis if those Headphones he's wearing are ok?

Miles: As long as they don't f**k up my hair

:D

[tgfoo]

Thanks for the link Lee. I'll check them out.

[JonFairhurst]

FWIW, here's a review of the Senn HD 280 Pro headphones. They claim 32 dB of isolation, but that's only at a few frequencies. This article remonds us that a single isolation number doesn't really matter. You really want to see the graph.

http://www.dansdata.com/hd280.htm

I bought the 280s to replace some junk closed phones that I had bought for about $40. The junk cans were hollow and parabolically shaped, so they actually acoustically *amplified* the mid frequencies in the voice range. Exactly the range I wanted to cancel!

-JF

[JonFairhurst]

The Elymotics might be the right choice...

http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=13&subTopicID=129

-JF

[JonFairhurst]

Maybe you could connect a thick red strap, so you could grap the rip-cord and yank those things out of your ears at the first bad transient!

I have the same concern, but if isolation is the main purpose, these have closed headphones beat by a mile. You could even wear sound isolation ear muffs on top of these and increase isolation even further. (They might balk the rip-cord though...)

It's probably not terribly risky to use these with samples. I wouldn't touch them for live tracking. Strangely, in-ear are mainly used in the riskiest environment - live, on stage. The in-ear stage monitors usually include compressors/limiters for this reason.

-JF

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I'd still vote for ditching the roommate.

[tgfoo]

Thanks for all of the sugestions. I'll look into some of these options. And no Bruce, ditching my roommate isn't an option. :) He's actually a pretty good roommate. He just likes to play his music loud...

[Beckers]

Thanks for all of the sugestions. I'll look into some of these options. And no Bruce, ditching my roommate isn't an option. :) He's actually a pretty good roommate. He just likes to play his music loud...

Buy some new headphones, not for you but for him.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

There you go!!