My last post referred to how good music sounds through headphones with the SRS iWOW iTunes plugin. Well, a large part of that has to do with exactly which headphones I have hooked up to my computer. I've tried a lot of high-end headphones over the last couple of years, including Shure e4c headphones (they gave me an ear infection because they irritated my middle ear) and these great Sony studio monitor headphones. I used those for monitoring audio on my shoots, and they sound great. Unfortunately, they don't cancel outside noise very well on airplanes.

Bose makes the most popular noise-cancelling headphones, but I think they're the most popular only because Bose has a great marketing department. The sound coming out of those headphones ain't worth $20, let alone the $299 list price for them. They sound muddy and hollow. No thanks!

I read a review of noise-cancelling headphones and found these: Audio Technica ATH-ANC7 Noise-Cancelling Headphones. I love them! Audio-Technica is a very high-end company out of Japan that employs a bunch of audiophile freak engineers. Their products are generally made for professional musicians in a studio setting. One of those engineers must have put on a pair of the Bose headphones and thought, "They're charging how much for these pieces of crap?!" and got to work on making noise-cancelling headphones that sound phenomenal!

My only complaint? They're pretty sensitive to interference from cell phones. These headphones seem to be primarily intended for use on planes (they don't filter out high frequencies very well), where cell phones can't be used. The noise cancellation is designed to filter out low-freuquency consistent sounds (like you hear on a plane). I will have to say, though that they make working in my home office, with two girls and a baby girl running around rambunctiously, a much saner environment. I can focus a lot better and keep a train of thought. Sometimes I don't even listen to music through them. I just put them on, turn them on and enjoy the silence.

Tags: headphones, noise cancelling, Audio, product review

A while ago MacUpdate put together a bundle of Mac software. Being a compulsive buyer, I bought it. I can't remember which program got me excited about the bundle, but I came away with a lot of software I'm really enjoying. The program I'm enjoying most, however, is called SRS iWOW for iTunes. It's a sound enhancement plugin for iTunes that makes the laptop speakers on my MacBook Pro sound roughly 6.73 times better than they did before. The plugin also includes presets for listening to headphones or for when your computer is hooked up to your stereo at home. It doesn't work over AirPort Express (damn!) but the effect it has to music playing out of your laptop speakers or headphones still makes it worth the purchase price of $19.99 SO worth it. I think they even have a PC version (like you care!).

You can get it here.

Tags: Itunes, product review, Audio, mac, computer, software