The clue in what they do is in their name. Active Noise Cancelling headphones basically counteract the effect of background noise meaning that if you’re listening to your ipod in a noisy area like a train, aeroplane or walking down a busy street, the technology will almost fully remove the constant drone you can hear alongside your music. Creative have always been pretty good with their audio goodies so when it says up to 90% ambient noise cancellation, you’re pretty sure it won’t be lying.

Firstly the earphone’s themselves are the in-ear type with the silicone buds that sit on the end. Now these are noise cancelling in themselves to a certain degree as they sit inside the ear-canal and expand to fill any gaps, reducing the background noise getting in and keeping the good sound in the ear. The silicone buds come in three different sizes to suit the user, due to my small stature the small ones were enough for me keeping the phones nice and comfortable in my ear with few slip-outs.

Secondly there’s the active noise cancelling unit. The unit requires a AAA battery to operate and perform the noise cancelling, but the battery life can be up to 100 hours on constant, but you don’t need the noise cancelling on all the time, just in noisy areas, plus the headphones don’t require the battery to actually work so if it runs out, your music won’t suddenly cut out. How does the noise cancelling work? The EP-3NC basically has external microphones that monitor the background noise around you and then produces a sound within the unit that’s in the exact opposite phase which essentially cancels it out. Now by any means it doesn’t cancel every single noise out, but it’s great against monotonous sounds. The first time I used it I was in a room with a refrigerated vending machine which gave out a loud constant noise. Just putting the phones in and switching on instantly cut out the drone(with no music played). I also tried them walking down a main road, where the cars going past could hardly be heard and what I was most impressed with was using them on the train, cutting out the engine noise to almost nothing. Also on the unit is a “Monitor” button. Upon being pressed and held it cuts out the music so you can listen to what’s going on around you without having to stop your music or take the headphones out, obviously something they’ve thought about if you were using the headphones whilst travelling to hear announcements, ticket conductors/stewardesses etc. A nice little feature.

This comes in halfway up the cable and is about the size of my thumb. . The unit itself is quite heavy for it’s size and this could prove a little annoying in finding a comfortable position to place it when using the headphones. It has a clip on it to attach to your clothing, pocket, whatever so it wasn’t swinging freely or dragging the headphones from your ears but with it being in the middle of the cable and the majority of the time I’d have it clipped to the top of my jacket there’d be too much cable at the headphone and not enough going to my iPod in my pocket. Now this wasn’t a major problem by any means, it just took a few goes to find a comfortable place to put everything for when i was walking around. When sat down it wasn’t a problem at all.

The sound quality is another thing I was impressed with too. The EP-3NC gave out rich, bassy sound and when I tried different music types on it they all sounded great. The volume levels are to high standard and didn’t really change at full volume(which was pretty darn loud) If you’re the complete audiophile though these might not be completely up to your standard for music with very high ranges like classical for instance but great for your run-of-the-mill rock, dance and hip-hop.

The conclusion I’ve come to with these is basically they’re great, especially if you like bassy sounds to your tunes and do a lot of travelling. The noise-cancellation really makes a difference and i was truly impressed at how well they worked on a noisy train journey. At around the £90 mark at most retailers these are definitely worth it. You also get a little leather case to put them in when not in use, which I always use due to my proneness of sitting on things and breaking them, plus again aiming for the traveller you get one of those double adaptor for use on some aircraft. Creative again we salute you!

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Creative EP-3NC Noise Cancelling Headphones : Review

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For a headband headset without the inconvenience of cables, the DR-BT101 Sony headphones are the ideal choice. Enjoy rich, clear sound through the headphone's 30mm neodymium driver, whilst twelve hours of playback means there is no risk of running out of power on long journeys.

Both models announced today feature built-in echo and noise cancelling technology for exceptional sound quality, and Bluetooth 2.1 also reduces interference.

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

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It has now been confirmed by 3rd parties that the new shuffle earphones do require a authentication chip and Apple will require companies to pay a licence fee to be part of the Made for iPod program.

However apparently the chip isn't encrypted or otherwise locked down in any way, so it's easily cloned by companies who'd rather not pay but this will mean the earphones will not be able to carry the “Made for iPod certification” logo which will probably lead to a loss in sales.

via Engadget

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In the next few months we should be seeing the release of Sony’s new flagship X series Walkman. From its features it looks like it could be a real winner for Sony with its 2 best features being the 3-inch OLED touchscreen and the built in noise reduction.

The OLED screen should provide far better picture quality than the likes of the iTouch and should improve battery life.

More interestingly the noise reduction /cancelling is a feature that has not been built into a player before and should help give Sony some kudos points compared to Apple. If you look at current noise cancelling earphones they are expensive and have a bulky battery pack. The cheapest I could find we could find were the Sony MDRNC22 earphones which are £49.99 on Amazon so you are basically adding 50 quids worth of features into your player straight away and you are also losing the annoying battery pack.

However there is one issue that has been raised about this technology. Basically noise cancelling works by picking up the background noise then playing the opposite sound and therefore cancelling them out. So for noise cancelling to work properly it needs to be picking up accurate background sounds. This would not be the case if the microphone for the noise cancelling was built into the player itself. I am assuming the majority of people carry their MP3 player in their pocket so this would have a completely negate the noise cancelling effects.

We contacted Sony to find out exactly how the noise cancelling will work on the Sony X Series Walkman and we received the following reply:

“In the X series, there are two noise cancelling microphones which are built into the L&R headphones. Therefore the noise cancelling measurement is taken just outside the ear.
Most noise cancelling in-ear headphones have the electronics/ battery built into the cord, but the mics are in the earbuds themselves. The X series has the electronics built into the Walkman itself, reducing the bulk of the headphones and removing the need for a separate battery.”

So it looks like the noise cancelling wont be completely gimped, however it does look like you will be forced to use the Sony supplied headphones if you wish to use the noise cancelling technology.

It is a bit frustrating to be restricted to one set of headphones, and I am guessing replacements won’t be cheap however in Sony’s defence I am not entirely sure it is physically possibly for everything to be contained within the device as the sounds the mic picks up will be completely wrong. Sony have also stated they will be high end earphones so you won’t be getting some crappy cheapo ones like Apple.

Even though I will reluctantly be forced to use the supplied I still think their is a good chance I will buy one, and hopefully Sony will allow us to review one first!

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

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The range includes and an in ear range consisting of the MDR-XB20EX and MDR-XB40. The other headphones all traditional closed-typ headphones and have a King size ear cushion and wide headband for maximum wear comfort. These headphones consist of the MDR-XB700, XB500, and XB300

All headphones in the XB series are designed to recreate the club ambience with powerful, ultra-low bass response and they all have an exclusive driver unit reproduces low frequencies accurately

Mighty Gadget have been lucky enough to try out the flagship model, the MDR-XB700. This premium headphone features innovative Sony technologies that take you straight to the heart of the dancefloor (according to their press release anyway!)

The headphones themselves are very good looking, though I imagine this could be very much a case of personal preference. They consist of a large flat headband with brushed aluminium extenders and then huge chunky ear cushions.

Sony also opted to use a flat ribbon style cable which is pretty cool unfortunately the cable is very short, the cable is only fractionally longer that that used on my Sennheiser CX300 earphones. This may sound ok but you need to take into account the Sennheiser’s are in-earphones and are generally small all round, they are great for walking around listening to your iPod etc. The MDR-XB700’s dwarf the CX300 these are literally old school styled headphones that you would expect to plug into an Amplifier and not walk around the street with. With a cable this short there is just no chance you could use them with an Amplifier or you computer. It is not all bad though, it is quite an easy fix as you can buy extenders from many electronics shop, however you shouldn’t really need to and Sony should of provided these.

Anyway lets move on, the headphones themselves are very comfortable, the ear cushion is heavily padded and even the largest ears should be able to fit in without many issues. They are also held on you head with enough force to keep them still but without squashing your head.

Thanks to the size of the ear cushions you get excellent noise cancellation, I could barely hear anything other than my music when trying them out.

In terms of the sound quality you can definitely tell these are designed for the bass, I started off listening to some Mars Volta and found the bass from the drums to be a little over powering at first, however the overall quality of sound was good. Moving on to some more bass orientated music such as DJ Yoda I found the bass focus really shines, people who enjoy dance/electronica/hip hop will really enjoy these phones. Yes you do lose a bit of mid-range/treble when playing anything with a heavy baseline however I feel the type of person that buys a range of headphones called xTra Bass and listens to music with a heavy bass such as hip hop etc will probably be loving the bass so much they wont notice treble frequencies being overwhelmed.

At the end of the day if you are an audiophile with an eclectic range of musical tastes then these headphones are probably not to your taste. If you have a car stereo that costs more than your car then I think it is a very safe bet you will enjoy these ‘phones.

Overall they do what they say on the box, and provide deep extra bass for the true bass lover. The only real criticism is the short cable, which can be over come by buying an extender but for a flagship model it should be included.

No word on pricing yet but it appears to be around $150 in the states.

Post from: Mighty Gadget - Gadget and Technology Blog

Review: Sony’s flagship headphones MDR-XB700

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