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I am not a big music fan. I appreciate good sound, but I have never really chased the latest greatest sound system out there and my iPod has been collecting some serious dust for quite some time. Therefore, it had to be other reasons that dragged me into getting myself the Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones. To be accurate, I purchased the Limited Edition, which only differs by its blue color from the original silver one.
I heard about the noise cancelling technology before and the principle behind it is rather simple, applying an opposite signal to the one of the surrounding noise to simply cancel it out, so to speak. For more details there is a pretty good self explanatory video on the Bose website.
I was definitely curious about the benefits of this technology, having struggled myself with easily distracting surroundings. I had to give it a try and stopped by the Bose shop. I must say first that these headphones don't come cheap, at a retail price of $299 and even slightly more in Europe. Therefore as a rather "ungifted" musician, I had never really planned to invest in expensive music gears. But this was before the tryout...
The headphones are really easy to use, a single toggle button sets the noise cancelling on and off, simple though quite life-changing. Once the noise cancelling is on, the feeling is quite amazing; simply nearly every surrounding noise out there is removed, even those which you had never really noticed, making the feeling even more surprising... First reaction: you smile, second reaction: you relax, third one: you wonder how you got that far without them. There were no doubts. I bought them...
As opposed to many products on the consumer electronics market, requiring you to purchase hundreds of side accessories to simply make use of the main device, the QC15 comes with its own and rather fancy protective box. The box contains two sets of jack cables, including one with volume control and a stereo double jack adapter for use in an airplane.
So while I am not a music addict, I still had to put them through the music test — these are Bose headphones after all. First observation is that, as opposed to regular headphones, I did not need to increase the volume to hear a cleaner sound. Keeping the volume to a reasonable level gives a way purer sound, while still casting away all disturbances around me. The sound appears really clean, basses are clear, therefore most definitely a good product for music lovers too.
But as I said, I am more of a silence lover, and the place I miss it the most is in the sky. Which is why I gave them a try during four three-hour flights, and the feeling was just unbelievable. All this background noise, from passengers chats, air conditioning, jet engines and other background vibration, simply flattened and left me with my thoughts...
Reading a book has never been this easy in an airplane: even the takeoff sounds like little disturbance, and the passenger in the next seat is just lost in the background. Only problem though, is that I might have missed some of the cabin crew refreshment rounds, but again, these are noise cancelling headphones, not "sound" cancelling, so in general you still get to hear people directly addressing you, up to a certain extent.
Though, I am undoubtedly a geek, I am usually not going after the latest "gadgets," but I must say that I really consider these headphones an investment for tranquility as opposed to treating myself with a new toy. The benefits are definitely worth the investment and these headphones are surely beyond the gadget threshold, both money wise and high-end quality wise.
On the negative side, and there is only one thing I could think of, should you run out of battery, the headphones cannot be used to listen to music without the noise canceling on. Therefore they're not usable as passive non-powered headphones. This can become quite an annoyance during a long-haul flight for instance.
All in all, these headphones are the best friends of silence lovers, travelers, and maybe writers in desperate needs for quiet inspiration time... I am about to board a DHC-08 "propeller plane," so fingers crossed for the ultimate test.
