Noise

Part of the shipment with my MP3 player was a set of Jensen noise cancelling[^] headphones. Last night, flushed with the excitement of the player I just used the standard earbuds (horrible name) shipped with it and set the Jensen headphones aside.

It all sounded good.

Being a curious descendant of curious monkeys I opened up the Jensen package today, plugged em in, unfolded em (they fold down into a very small space indeed) and gave em a try. They sounded good so I moved the switch to the 'on' position. No difference.

Uh huh. The back of the bubble package (there's no user manual) indicated that a LED should light up. A quick check and there's no battery. Did I have a single AAA cell in the house? Of course not! So I went to the local Basha's supermarket, endured the 'stamps or ice' query and returned with 4 AAA cells. Slotted one in and hit the switch!

I reckon I need to get out more. I just tried it now with the headphones on but no music playing. Off and I can hear the fan noise from the many computers in our house. Switch the bugger on and it goes to silence!

With music playing I get a slight reduction in volume but, more importantly, in the quieter passages, all I hear with it on is the quiet; off and I hear the fan noise.

They include an adapter for use on airline audio systems. I've never been happy with airline headphones; one can never really hear what's happening above the 'rushing through air at 600 Km/h' background noise. Raising the volume doesn't make it any easier. But if this works as well on aircraft noise as it does with the fans here it'll be wonderful indeed.

Interestingly enough, it seems to work best on the 'continuous' background noise. It doesn't cancel out the sound of Morgan stomping her way downstairs!