My wife wants to listen to mp3s in her tractor, there's a head unit in there but you'd need to really crank it up to be heard over the engine. I'm thinking noise cancelling headphones could be the way forward, she's never previously had even a tape walkman so has never used 'phones, I hardly ever use them either, but in my limited experience I've never got on with in ear ones like these:

http://tinyurl.com/onrduj

I used to find the old Rio Karma ones comfortable but can't see any like that on there. Most of the external ones are huge.

Any recommendations? A thought that's just occurred to me is whether she should be listening to music at all, she'll be adding more noise to an already noisy environment for 3-4 hour stints, should she be worried about her hearing, and would noise cancelling be better or worse in this regard?

Give her work environment I would have though headphone as opposed to ear bug would be a better noise canceling solution.
I have a set of Creative HN-700 that I put on whenever I head to the server room - they do a good job of blocking our the drone of all the server fans. If I'm stay long I'll also put in ear plugs.

Isn't noise cancelling basically balancing out background noise by adding more noise? Someone's just pointed me at these which exclude background sound:

http://store.shure.com/store/shure/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/productID.121026300

Might be my solution?

Well, yes... and no. The noise that is added is in exact opposition to the noise that is being canceled, and they really do cancel each other out. In other words, if the noise cancellation were perfect, you would "hear" complete silence. However, the cancellation is not perfect, and (at least in the case of the Bose noise canceling earphones) seems optimized for canceling the jet engine drone inside a commercial jet, in particular leaving the normal speaking range (say from 200--500 Hz) essentially unfiltered.




Those are not noise canceling earphones. They are ordinary earbuds that (according to the manufacturer's claims) fit tightly enough that they keep extraneous noise from entering your ears. I don't believe their claims. They look like ordinary earbuds to me with greatly inflated price. I use similar earbuds, and while there is noticeable attenuation of external noise, it is nothing like true noise cancellation.

The setup I am currently using has proven to be better than I had anticipated, for my purposes at least. I can't personally speak to sound quality since all I am listening to is low-bitrate audiobooks, but other reviewers seem satisfied. It takes quite some time and fiddling to bend the wires (they twist and bend like pipe cleaners) to get the perfect comfortable and snug fit with the earbuds pointed just right into the ear canals, but once that is done the noise isolation is significant. The whole thing is so lightweight that I can't imagine what sort of gyrations would be necessary to involuntarily dislodge it, and the freedom from dangling wires is something you won't fully appreciate until you experience it for yourself.

The downside is that you must pair the headphnes with a Generation 2 iPod Shuffle that is no longer being manufactured. They are still available here and there, both new and used, although the larger capacity 2GB model is harder to find. You must also be sure that the Shuffle fits your listening style, as there is no display screen so navigation to specific tracks is next to impossible. Best way to do it is build and organize your playlist in iTunes, then load it into the iPod with shuffle-mode turned off. Note also that reaching the iPod's controls (volume up/down, track forward/back) is much easier than with a regular setup since it is always right there out in the open on the back of your neck. Since I use mine only for audiobooks, I went so far as to disable my shuffle switch with a drop of epoxy after twice inadvertently shuffling my book chapters.

You might give the Arriva 'phones with iPod Shuffle a try. They work well for me.

tanstaafl.

Excellent reviews and basic info here: http://www.headphone.com/

If she's driving a tractor and *not* wearing at least ear plugs (if not full size ear protection) she should definitely start today.

This makes me think that either your earbuds aren't much good, or, possibly, your ears are a funny shape

I once found myself on an aeroplane with both some Bose noise-cancelling headphones and some very pricey Etymotic earbuds, so I could try them both. The Boses definitely reduced the noise a bit (you could tell the difference when you switched on the noise-cancelling system). But the Etymotics wiped out the noise completely.

On the other hand, that probably rules out earbuds as an answer to the actual question being asked, as they work so well that you'd never be able to hear other important noises -- such as, for instance, people yelling "Oi, 'appen tha's about to run me over wi' yon tractor".

Peter

Sod the noise cancelling. Get her a pair of these. We used them in the studio when we had bands in with full touring rigs. Although they make your ears sweaty.

Or this



pca

I always loved my Peltors when I was flying cessnas...

We also have some Beyers but the Peltors are much better.

We've got a pair of something like these at work:
http://www.noisebuster.net/over-the-head-features.php
This one even comes with an audio-in jack.

It's serious professional ear protection- which, again, I encourage you to look into for the well-being of your wife's hearing.

Now that I like

To Robotic and Andym. She asked why she can't just stick her earbuds in under her existing ear defenders (I was unaware that she had a pair, apparently a friend gave em to her). Guess it makes sense?

I've been through safety with her numerous times and will do so again before she gets iPodded, she really only uses the tractor when the kids are at school, hence no one around, except bunny rabbits. She'll obviously need to understand the safety implications of this setup. Ooarr!

I suppose she could put the earbuds under her muffs.

The only issue I see as a problem is that which has already been mentioned- a lack of aural awareness of the surroundings as she works.

I would like to point out that we may be confusing terms and types.
In my mind, 'earbuds' refers to the style that nestles in the outer ear with no clip support.
The style that often is sold as 'noise suppressing' actually goes into the ear canal very much like earplugs do.
http://www.headphone.com/guide/by-headphone-type/

I think the 'earbud' style would be safer than the 'ear canal' style in this case.

Thanks, I guess we'll have to try a few different combinations.

I'd just successfully dismantled a pair of Sennheisers and duck taped them in to my ear defenders, when my supervisor suggested that it was rather dangerous, what with level crossings and one thing and another to use them whilst driving my favourite monster!

- quite right in retrospect.

That's a bit more impressive than the missus Ferrari, mind you it's got an articulated chassis and reversible driving position. Bet yours hasn't got 16 forward and 16 reverse gears...



Missus has just gone out with Shures AND ear defenders to mow the hazelnut field. Will report back but it takes a lot of fiddling with them to find an earpiece that's effective and comfortable. They sound better than the standard iPod ones to me.

I have enough trouble with three, but then I've driven automatic cars since the mid 70's: We've got a smaller engine with only two!
The last tractor that I drove was a Ferguson in '63 and I think that that had three!

I looks like someone's taken an ordinary tractor and crushed it a little....

Looks sort of like a Smart car - on growth hormones.

It's very handy for orchard work which is why we bought it, artic steer means a turning circle of 3 mtrs, wish we could have afforded a newer one with proper AC and better noise insulation.

I'm finding this topic very interesting...

My office is in a server room and my desk right next to the racks. It wasn't too bad when I started 8 months ago, but since then the number of servers has doubled and with it the noise level. Currently there's no budget for noise mitigation materials, so I've been thinking of other ways to counter the noise.

Earlier this week I brought in a pair of ATH-M40 to listen to music with and found that they had the side effect of blocking a bit of the noise. Today I had the realization that it shouldn't be too hard to have a piece of software running on my Macbook to sample the ambient noise with the built in microphone, then pipe out the inverse-wave to the headphones, giving me a degree of noise canceling with gear that I'm already using.

I can't be the first person to have thought of this solution, but I haven't been able to find any examples of this being implemented. Anyone else know of a solution like this?

To cancel the noise properly, the noise-canceling signal needs to be properly 180-degrees out of phase with the incoming noise. That means you really want to have microphones adjacent to your ears, so you're getting the exact signal that's trying to get through to your ears. That's more-or-less what all the active noise-canceling headphones actually do.

I don't think you could do nearly as well with a distant microphone.

Also the delays in the sampling and playback would be too long I think.

I use a pair of Sennheiser eH250 bins at work, and they're pretty good at excluding external noise. I'm not in a server room, though...

I've had a pair of Sennheiser PXC-250's for years now, and I've always been really happy with their noise cancelling properties.

What DWallach said. The sampling microphones have to be right next to the playback speakers (the buds in your ears) for it to work.

It might sorta work if you strapped the macbook to your head.

If the noise is a single point-source, it's theoretically possible to install a limited version of noise cancelling on the source itself. An example would be on something that has a noisy engine, you could install a system of incredibly loud speakers around that engine. I seem to remember reading about someone doing that on a diesel train as an experiment.

But for any sampling point *between* the source and your ears, you simply can't have a catch-all noise canceler algorithm. Any noise heard by that sampler will be different than the noise heard by your ears, and would thus add to the ambient noise rather than subtracting from it.

What about noises *between* my ears? Can I get something to stop these voices in my head?

I'd always wondered if there was something you could do for tinnitus sufferers by using anti-phase audio. But I suppose the tone is being generated in the wrong place in your head.