Comment by wting | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wting | Hacker News Reader

I have a bunch of expensive headphones (Bose QC2, multiple inner ear), and the best solution I've found costs $28 and allows me to listen to music comfortably on a Mac at 0.5 tick!

I use a pair of earphones[0] covered by industrial ear muffs[1]. For comfort reasons, it's important that the earphones are not pressured by the surrounding ear muffs. I haven't found any inner ear headphones that meet this constraint. Sometimes I'll swap out the earphones for ear plugs for double ear protection / white noise.

I'm not a fan of open office plans, but this combo lets me tune out everything. Coworkers have gotten used to pinging me or waving to get my attention.

Edit: Drowning out distractions by turning up the volume leads to hearing damage. A better alternative is to eliminate ever hearing external noises. However to prevent incoming noise, ear muffs create a tight seal around your ears. My wife is uncomfortable with the pressure for extended periods of time. I wear them hours daily, and especially love them for sleeping on planes.

[0]: JBuds J2 affiliate link (the white color is $7):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001GS8FZC/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

JBuds J2 non-affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/Premium-Noise-Isolating-Earbuds-Headph...

[1]: 3M Pelter H10A Optime 105 affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009LI4K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

3M Pelter H10A Optime 105 non-affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/3M-Peltor-H10A-Optime-Earmuff/dp/B0000...

I have those exact earmuffs and have used them for the last 4 years. (I bought them because they had the best dB rating (31, IIRC) I could find within a reasonable price range.) They definitely do eliminate surrounding sound very well. I wear them when I want to isolate myself from my environment and focus on something.

I'll echo that that they aren't as comfortable as headphones. Headphones typically try to be light and have a soft fit around the head. These are a little heavy and definitely a slightly tighter fit, like you said. If comfort is extremely important, I'm not sure they'll be appreciated for extended periods of time. I rarely wear them for longer than 20 or 30 minutes.

Yeah, I bought the same exact set of ear protectors and ended up not using them at all - either my ears are of a weird shape or my tolerance for something pressing at antihelix is lower than average.

So keep in mind when buying these that if you have large or 'stick out' ears the protector might be very uncomfortable. Perhaps going to an industrial safety and trying them on (with your earplugs on! that's important as any pressure on the earplug is bad) is your best bet.

I do the reverse setup: I use these earplugs [0] (or similar) and then put sennheiser hd280 (or whatever over-the-ear headphones $EMPLOYER gave me) over them. The former claim 20dB reduction, and I guess that the latter give another ~3dB.

I can take the earplugs onto airplanes a bit easier than earmuffs, but if I were to sit nearer to the coworker with the model M, I might switch to earbuds-under-earmuffs.

[0] http://amzn.com/B0015WNZ9K

I do something similar when flying - a pair of Klipsch S4i's and a cheap pair of active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones on top (I personally use a pair of able planets I picked up on Groupon). It shuts out engine noises and I don't need to shell out a bunch of money and sacrifice portability if I only want to listen to music on the go.

Nice idea.

30dB isolation is about what is claimed from some DJ style headphones. I use a pair of old BeyerDynamics that claim 20dB isolation and that seems a good compromise between peripheral awareness and isolation for my particular setting.

"Coworkers have gotten used to pinging me or waving to get my attention" . One of my coworker is just like you. We have to ping him to have small discussions.

Then it works. Case closed.

This is a conscious culture decision for my workplace.

We ping / discuss topics over IRC even though most of my team is within talking distance. This provides (remote employees|other teams|working from home people) a chance to provide input, logging for reference, and is more multi-tasking friendly (semi-asynchronous communication). However if it feels like a lot of back and forth, we'll discuss in person or via Google Hangouts.

You know how engineers complain about being distracted by people asking random questions throughout the day? We have an email / IRC first culture which minimizes distractions as much as possible.

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