Noise-canceling headphones with a DO NOT DISTURB light can't silence your critics The Register's Sydney eyrie will soon be demolished, so Vulture South needs a new office and we're probably going to nestle into a shared workspace. Which is why I decided to try out the Jabra Evolve 80, a pair of noise-canceling headphones that feature red lights on the earpieces designed to warn people you do not wish to be …
While I like that concept, letting my coworkers Darwin themselves out of existence is fine by me, but I'd start with a simple desktop sign on a folded cardboard plaque that read "If the red lights are on I'm busy. Please leave me a note or come back later when the red lights are off. Thank you."
This would let them know I'm hard at work, "in the zone", & if they disturb me it might prove more than they bargained for (like me pulling a Milton & reaching for my red Swingline). But if they simply leave me a note on the pad I'd leave for that purpose on the side of my desk, then I'd get back to them once I come up for air. Unless it's something critical (unlikely) or an emergency (not impossible) then it can wait.
But I still like the idea of an R2D2 style AEGIS Point Defense System sitting atop my monitor & programmed to ignite the flamethrower at anyone that can't take the hint.
*Ominous cackle*
@AC Re: Rolf Harris mug
I'm impatiently waiting for my Tobias Funke* mug (somewhat NSFW) for office use. I suspect (and hope!) it'll have the same result in deterring people from bugging me during the day.
Thanks to an accident caused by a Drunk Driver I suffer with Hyperacusis.
In order for me to function outside of my home I have to wear Noise-Canceling Headphones and quite often industrial grade earplugs as well.
Before I started wearing a little hand made sign in a plastic conventioneers ID badge holder people would come up to me and start shouting, assuming I was listening to music or some sports broadcast. Since I started using the sign very few people speak before reading the sign, saving me considerable annoyance and them the ensuing embarrassment of being asked to please talk at a normal level, I can hear you just fine.
A simple "Please Do Not Disturb" sign should have a similar effect on your co-workers.
Having bounced around a few offices in the city (started at Market Street, been in the Rocks, Surry Hills and now Sussex Street) I found WeWork Pyrmont to be rather nice, price wasn't too bad for the co-hab spaces (I ended up with a dedi-desk as I didn't fancy moving all my crap everyday in the freerange desks).
They have ping pong tables, lots of cool meeting rooms that scale to your needs and, oh yeah, free beer on tap..
So you can turn the red lights on then drink beer and play ping-pong without any interruptions?
There may necessarily be some beer-induced interruptions, unless you're suitably prepared.
All the active noise cancelling headphones I've seen only cancel the lower frequencies, below 300Hz.
For higher frequencies, which includes most of voice's spectral power you're probably better off with some earplugs or well insulated cans.
Here are the results of a scientific review:
https://www.lifewire.com/measure-noise-cancelling-in-headphones-3134548
Earplugs - unless sold specifically for music gigs - don't attenuate all frequencies equally. That said, I've used them with some big Sennheisers over the top when sleeping on busses - the music sounded a bit murky and distant, but was fine to fall asleep to.
The above link is good, but I'm not sure I'd paraphrase as the OP above did. A lot of reviews are hailing the Sony MDR 1000X noise-cancelling headphones as the supplanting Bose as the new king.
https://www.whathifi.com/sony/mdr-1000x/review
Best bit of kit that I've used is Shure SE215 noise isolating earphones. They combine ear plugs, which knock just short of 40 dB off the background noise, and some good quality headphone drivers. All for change out of £100. They've made my life in a noisy open-plan office far more tolerable
That lifewire link shows the cancellation characteristics of some fairly terrible noise cancelling headphones though, as an awful lot of them are.
The gold-standard has been the Bose QC series. They just happen to have a lifewire test on the in-ear QC20s - showing significant attenuation in the usual low frequencies, but also above 300Hz all the way to about 5kHz.
The reason no one else comes close is because bose have significant patents regarding noise cancelling, filed between 2001-2010 which have plenty of life left in them, and in the real world, mean if you're buying anything other than bose for noise cancelling, you're more than likely wasting your money because nothing else comes close - they did some innovation in the noughties and have the market stitched up for the next few years.
Of course, it's a pity for audiophiles as they have the old adage - no highs, no lows? must be bose.
Sennheiser PXC 450
Come reasonable close to the Bose in terms of noise cancellation and they have bigger cans - something of importance when you have big ears and need to wear them for extended periods of time [as in 6 plus hours at a time for several successive days at a time].
I've been using the same pair, my second in the last 7 years for nearly 3 years and they are still going strong with only a fresh set of foam pads about once a year to keep the seal tight.
They have a removable cable so don't have to deal with the aggravation of a dangling wire trying to strangle me when I just want the noise canceling.
Excellent battery life as well, operating for circa 20 hours on a single AAA alkaline cell.
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I find this kind of noise is "blankable"
It depends on the type of aircraft. When I'm in the office, we get some aircraft noise from jets flying over to/from the nearby airport, but that's something I seem to have got used to.
At home, on the other hand, I'm quite close to a military training range. A Typhoon screaming overhead at 200' (or the occasional Hercules or Atlas flying low and tactical) is far from blankable...but they look cool, so I don't mind so much.
'I find this kind of noise is "blankable", it's the constant talking and people moving that I find distracting.'
Unfortunately I have this terrible condition where I have to try and identify any aircraft I hear, although I agree people talking is a distraction from that.
For a long time the Bose QC have been reviewed as the best at cancelling noise, but recently the wired/wireless Sony MDR 1000X have been compared to them. For a similar price the Sonys have more features, and will still function as wired headphones with a flat battery. They also have a mic for calls, and can use LDAC - a high resolution Bluetooth audio codec that Sony has donated to the AOSP and is included in Oreo.
The QCs do all of those things, to be fair. The thing I really like about the Sonys is the clever touchpad on the side, letting you temporarily "un-mute" the world, skip tracks, pause and a bunch of other nifty things. Plus it has real cancellation profiles and decent EQ, with Bose and their godawful app are sorely lacking.
If the MDR-1000Xs had been out when I got my QC35s I'd probably have gone for them instead.
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Yes. Unsurprisingly airlines have figured out that running their engines at peak efficiency burns less fuel, which is now required given the huge competition in the airlines business.
Thankfully gas turbines tend to have peak efficiencies at high-end of their power range, so we're not pootling around at 56mph like your average Prius hyper-miler, but we're going slower than we did 20 years ago.
"Thankfully gas turbines tend to have peak efficiencies at high-end of their power range"
This is because the compressors consume terrifying amounts of power over almost the entire range, even at idle. At cruising thrust levels, something like two-thirds of the output power of the engine core is consumed by the compressor.
Expression of wild-eyed, maniacal insanity, responding to every query with "What was that, Mr Flibble? Two hours W-O-O? Yes, that will teach him for being a bread basket" and filling the spaces with mumbled rants. They don't even have to be coherent, just make sure they sound ominous.
Worked for me for years, headphones optional. It's all spare cycles anyway.
oh, those headphones look fab! Just saying!
well done, mate!
look, why is that red ring on, is it, like, a feature?
you what?!
nah, nothing, just wanted to take a piss!
I don't know why you're so popular today, but I thought I should let you know!
I don't know if you heard this, cause you're wearing those phones, you know, but...
...
(muffled) humming sound (vacuum)
Pete Townshend sees major problems coming for kids who live with earphones stuffed in their lugholes. He blames his hearing loss at least in part on using headphones throughout his career*.
I hope today’s technology is better but the advice is:
Get the best phones you can.
Have them professionally fitted if the manufacturer offers such a service.
Use noise cancellation avidly when necessary so you ..,
.... DON’T PLAY EM TOO LOUD.
*’Course, Keith Moon setting off explosives in lifts didn’t help. Nor did playing in the band which for many years held the record for the loudest in history (Charlton Athletic football ground if memory serves - 1974?) BUT his warning should still be taken at face value.
Even without active mouse cancelling, passive mouse blocking earbuds (professionally fitted, or try different sized tips or Comply foam tips) will still reduce the ambient mouse so that music doesn't need to be played so loudly. As for closed-back over-the-ear headphones, try some til you find a good comfortable fit that reduces mouse.
Most music venues these days are better at having PA systems that don't damage hearing as easily - medical science and PA design has advanced since the eighties - but I wouldn't go to a festival without some cheap earplugs. More expensive earplugs (made for gigs) attenuate all frequencies equally, but that doesn't matter for all genres of music.
Re proofreading:
"What ya mean? I said mouse! Is your hearing damaged from too much loud mouse?!"
I knew damned well I'd written mouse, but mouse cancelling amused me. If someone here was unable to get the meaning because I substituted one word for another they must be hard of thinking.
However, of I ever use if instead if of, that'll be a typo on my part and yeah, I shoulda proofread my post!
I find it quite amusing that most people (self included!) can read their own writing a dozen times, and still manage to overlook the most obvious of typos ... and yet, any idiot can (and usually does!) spot the typo instantly, and with malice aforethought.
We now return you to the previously scheduled mouse cancelling, already in progress.
Nor did playing in the band which for many years held the record for the loudest in history
This reminds me of the various accounts of damage reportedly caused by the loudest bands.
I really shouldn't laugh. Having seen Deep Purple and Motorhead half a dozen times, maybe I was just lucky.
Having spent a good deal of my life, teenage -> early thirties playing my bass and going to gigs either as a participant or an observer I have no idea how my hearing has managed to survive unscathed.
During my teens you could usually find me close enough to the stage for my pre-punk long hair to be pushed around by the bass bins[0]. By the time I was 25ish, I was usually a trifle further back ... but thirty-odd years on I still like my music live & loud as often as possible.
I think it was Flugennock who once opined that it was the clean sound mixing of our generation that protected our hearing. I'm inclined to agree. Today's kids don't even seem to know the difference between the acoustics of an indoor and an outdoor venue ...
[0] Kind of an early version of sub-woofers, for you youngsters in the audience.
Sometime back in the nineties there was actually a campaign in the US to try and get live music venues to turn down the volume.
As I recall, it was started by a sound guy who realised that everyone in the club - the musicians, the sound guy, the lighting guy, the fans, the bar people, the door people - were wearing earplugs at every show.
Made sense to me; went nowhere. Of course it's not just the overall sound pressure, it's the quality of the gear and the mix that also matter. Too often crap equipment + inadequate sound guy = SUPER LOUD.
Then again, a generation that has grown up with earbuds 24/7 is likely going to need that excessive volume by the time they're fifty.
Harumph! In my day we earned our deafness the old-fashioned way! Standing two feet away from a million watt speaker stack!
of using noise cancelling headphones because they moved me to a shared office and I'm just about on some spectrum or other (probably the spectrum of being a perfectly normal human being) enough to find it impossible to work when there are people reeling off lists of numbers or talking loudly and having meetings under 6 feet away; it is enough of a disturbance to entirely wipe out that internal voice that reads out code and plans subroutines and holds function names and parameter lists in temporary workspace after looking up the definition in another file because the documentation (my fault) isn't yet extended to include the new parameter.
The problem is that the silence that falls is NOT a natural silence. I'm freaked out enough that my map of my personal space and environment is multi-modal - I like to hear my keyboard clicks bouncing back off the walls in a rather predictable pattern of reverberation. I can tell if someone stands behind me because they cast a shadow in the sounds I'm making as I type. I find it VERY disturbing to wear headphones. Can't do it on the street when I'm walking about. Can't understand why cyclists seem to wear headphones. Can't do it if I'm sat at a cafe waiting for someone. My hearing is like a sixth sense for me.
So I don't want to wear headphones, let alone noise cancelling ones.
So I've taken to staying late after work until the rest of the people have gone home if I have coding to do. Photoshop work is fine. Typing shitty invoices up, letters, instruction manuals (but not code documentation), posting on El Reg... I can do that with background noise - just - and it's fine. It's just coding, proof reading and statistical analysis - can't do that with other people talking near me. Can't do it with headphones on as I start getting paranoid about people standing over me.
TL;DR. Open plan offices suck balls.
I find it actually IS the second sense for me. It's also _like_ a sixth sense. Sorry for not being clearer.
I suspect a long and entertaining argument could be had about whether it makes sense to describe it as such, but I also see no reason for anyone to have downvoted you, so have a thumbs up to go with that...
"Can't understand why cyclists seem to wear headphones" - many of us don't - I tried it once and felt far too isolated - in fact I used to drive a Mini Moke for years without windows/sides and tired headphones once for music* but much preferred being able to hear/sense everything around me.
I would love to listen to music while I'm cycling but have not come across a method which would keep it personal to me but also allow me to be be aware of the sounds around me - if anyone has any tips let me know.
*I believe this is illegal - I'll hand myself in when I'm very old.
My belief is that anyone wearing earbuds or headphones on a public access way has not only provided consent to being run over, but is actively requesting it, and i make a token effort to avoid doing so merely to disappoint them.
I used to wear various back-of-head headphones, down around my neck, just to get speakers relatively close to my ears without obstructing them.
These days I just hang a bluetooth speaker off my handlebars (bicycle) or belt (afoot in 'wilderness'), and use an innocuous playlist whilst urban, saving my psychedelic-black-metal-in-foreign-languages for ... most of the time I am at work ...
I consider it to be a safety feature, increasing others awareness of my proximity, or allowing wild animals to vacate the area. (I suspect Evanesence is less useful for chasing away snakes than Rammstein or Disturbed, and feral cattle seem to be fascinated by Orransi Pazuzu, Data collection is ongoing.)
I would never dream of cycling with headphones. Don't need another factor to contribute towards my demise.
On the flip side I ride motorcycle with earplugs and one of the quietest helmets available and never needed to hear anything. If you hear it over the engine and wind noise then it is too close for you to be able to do anything. Never had the issue with not being able to see emergency vehicles coming from behind me. Also try to stand in traffic while waiting for the lights to change stuck behind some moron who has removed all the stuffing from their already anti-social exhaust (or removed the catalytic converter) - your ears feel like bleeding despite the earplugs and helmet.
I cycle with Radio 4 on, but I put it off during manoeuvres that require undivided attention in case Boris Johnson or someone gets me wound up at the wrong moment. Doesn't help if Boris Johnson is cycling in my line of sight, but what can you do? Actually I have a few ideas and that's all I'm saying. (Only joking. Mostly joking.)
As for the "red alert" indicator (I've been watching "Star Trek Voyager" lately, they probably use 24th century red LEDs because theirs are on most of the time), you'd do better with either magneticable "SOD OFF" printed discs to slap onto both earpieces, or, wear your bicycle helmet at your desk, and people won't want to talk to you.
Also try to stand in traffic while waiting for the lights to change stuck behind some moron who has removed all the stuffing from their already anti-social exhaust (or removed the catalytic converter)
This is what potatoes were invented for.
(Don't worry about the moron spotting you inserting the potato -- they can't see shit through their tinted windows and they don't know what rear-view mirrors are for either.)
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I've got noise canceling ears but I wouldn't recommend them because it's called deafness.
My recently fitted NHS hearing aids communicate with with a dongle (Oticon Streamer Pro) which allows switching between a number of bluetooth devices, telephone adapter, TV adapter, mobile phone. Unfortunately the phone adapter does't work with the office phone system. The dongle also lets me turn off the microphones in my hearing aids so I can work in splendid isolation.
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