Ear Defence

[gropingmantis]

In the DC I work in we get provided with rubbish little foam ear plugs...they are terrible. Ok so they are great at drowning out the sound but you cant hear people talking to you and after a while they start to hurt my precious little ears.

So I have been looking around at some active noise cancelling over/on ear headphones/ear defenders. All the industrial ones I have looked at (3M/Peltor) are for loud impulse sounds like gunshots or high volume drone like aircraft or car engines. The other alternative was some Bose noise cancelling headphones that some of the guys at work use, but having tried both the QC-3 and QC-15 I found neither of them are particularly good at drowning out the full range of sounds you get in a data centre.

So what do you guys use if any? Any pointers would be very welcome.

 

[gropingmantis]

People have already asked about being allowed to play music through their Bose headphones and were told it was a no no. Any idea how the Goldrings compare to the Bose headphones? The main problem I found with the Boses, especially the QC-15 over ears, was that they relied too heavily on one or the other noise cancellation. So the cancellation in the QC-3s is really good but there is no physical defence and the QC-15s are the other way round...but the passive defence isnt very good.

What I really want is something like some passive Peltors with the QC-3 electronics working on a pass through mic and speaker so it blocks out pretty much everything except for someone talking to you or alarms etc.