in-ear headphones

I wanted something to protect my hearing while I was mowing and weed eating. The louder the noise, the better the noise cancelling. This product works very well. The mower is not quiet but it is quieted enough so that I can hear the music easily over the noise. This was absolutely not perfect. The mower is still loud but it is quieted enough to hear music easily. I'm happy.

This is a neat idea, and if you've ever tried the Bose models that do the same thing, you've used something that works pretty good. The idea behind these is to take the noise from around you, invert the waveform and feed it back into your ears thus cancelling out some of the noise. They are intended for use on airplanes or in other slightly noisy environments. They are not designed to eliminate all of the noise around you, only noises at fairly low frequencies (< 1200 Hz). These are slightly larger than your average earbuds to allow for the microphones required to get an input signal to invert.

OK, so how well do they work? Well, they don't work great. With the headphones on, they cut back on some of the noise around you on an airplane. I would be surprised if they were actually cancelling 10 dB of the noise that the instructions claim. They also have a fair amount of reduction in the power output from my MP3 player, so I have to turn the volume way up to hear the music. Given the chance to do it all over again, I would probably bring my Peltor H10A hearing protectors (also available at Amazon) with a pair of cheap earbuds on the plane instead. They don't have the same gee-whiz factor, but they work better and cost about the same.

I've been looking for relatively inexpensive buds since my year-old really expensive sony NC 10 stopped working properly in just over 2 years (a year after being 'repaired' for the same poor connection problem!!). I bought these in January and have been using them every weekday on the transit bus. They have reasonably good sound and do noticeably cut down most external noise but they can be quite uncomfortable. You need to find the optimum position and then try to keep them in place!! They would be great (and got 4-5 stars rating from me) if the bud design was better(like the Sony with soft rubber inserts)so as to provide a better seal - I can't understand why they were not better designed.