Amazing hearing protection - Bose 30 earphones

[jedd_imp]

I bought these last week to use on a 6 day bike ride.


Before this, I was using foam earplugs in conjunction w/ my Sena S20 communicators w/ external speakers velcro'd inside my Arai Full face as well as my Arai dual sport helmets. THe earplugs blocked out alot of the wind noise, but it also blocked out 90% of the music and GPS/cell phone/ voice commands that I depend on anytime I ride.

And before that I was using a $40 motorcycle wired earbuds by plugphones.


IT protruded too far outward from my ears, and so made it painful to wear underneath both my helmets. Also, it never stayed put inside my ears, and by the 2nd hr, it would leak in huge amounts of wind noise.

well, this Bose 30 is a new twist on an existing Bose 20 wired product, now in wireless/bluetooth form. Let me just say that the latest active noise cancelling from Bose is THE BEST system to date. This is coming from someone who still uses the Bose QC15 and QC30 noise cancelling headphones at home.

My gosh, they fit close enough to the ears that I wore them all day long under my helmet, 8 hrs long, and could not hear any wind noise whatsoever doing 90 mph for long stretches of pavement. My music no longer needs to be on full blast;it's barely 1/4 volume and the best part is I can actually hear the entire sound spectrum, vs a muffled midrange bandwidth w/ my former setup w/ earplugs & Sena S20.

When I get a phone call, the bose 30 voices out the phone number received. So I no longer need to stop what I'm doing, reach and look at my phone to see what number is calling me. That's a new feature that none of my headsets provided.

The built in battery lasts at least 8-10 hrs, and most of the juice is used to create the noise cancelling. you can easily increase/decrease noise cancelling to set your preferences on the fly. And it takes 2 hrs to charge via mini USB from 0% to 100%.

[Capo]

Question for those who might know...does 'noise canceling' have the same protective effect as blocking the noise via earplugs? Or does it just trick you into not hearing the noise while the ear drums still get bombarded?

[Rolls_imp]

Good question. Same protective effect.

[jedd_imp]

THe way I see it is, in order to hear, the eardrum must be able to vibrate according to the waves it receives. With noise cancellers, the unwanted incoming waves get stopped/cancelled out by the unit before the waves can get to my eardrums to cause any damage and/or strain.

It's like fighting fire with fire to protect your home from destruction.

[Ulvetanna_imp]

Question for those who might know...does 'noise canceling' have the same protective effect as blocking the noise via earplugs? Or does it just trick you into not hearing the noise while the ear drums still get bombarded?

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.

[Capo]

Question for those who might know...does 'noise canceling' have the same protective effect as blocking the noise via earplugs? Or does it just trick you into not hearing the noise while the ear drums still get bombarded?

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.
Yes, I'm not interested in sound blocking. I'm an all-the-time earplug wearer, and I do have helmet speakers for music, but never at a level that interferes with critical external sound. I just want the wind noise decreased.

[Ulvetanna_imp]

Question for those who might know...does 'noise canceling' have the same protective effect as blocking the noise via earplugs? Or does it just trick you into not hearing the noise while the ear drums still get bombarded?

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.
Yes, I'm not interested in sound blocking. I'm an all-the-time earplug wearer, and I do have helmet speakers for music, but never at a level that interferes with critical external sound. I just want the wind noise decreased.

Reverses the phase of the frequency which is coming from outside the earbud/phone. Completely cancels the energy of that frequency.

Very effective. You will NOT hear any vehicles approaching you. Those pesky sirens you'd hear when the fire trucks are bearing down on you to save your home burning to the ground won't interrupt the reveries of sweet, sweet music.

I am sure y'all gather I am not a fan of blocking the hearing in this way. Attenuation, not cancellation, is what we want. Not being able to hear emergency vehicles or other important ambient sounds, not good.

Noise cancelling is not legal, but soft earplugs are OK in CA now, though. I've never had any problem hearing emergency vehicles with these in my ears.
Yes, I'm not interested in sound blocking. I'm an all-the-time earplug wearer, and I do have helmet speakers for music, but never at a level that interferes with critical external sound. I just want the wind noise decreased. You don't want noise-cancelling. Great for pilots who hear everything they need to hear through the headset, not great for us riders who need to hear ambient noise that can be a threat.

The noise-cancellation works by the headset's external microphone comparing the external sound frequencies to what is being piped into the speakers. Anything doesn't match perfectly, the headset generates a perfect replication out of phase, which completely negates the objectionable sounds. It uses a computer for this. However sound can still seep through if the headphones or earbuds don't seal perfectly, it all depends on how effective the seal is between the ear and the headset. It's not perfect. Isolation headphones are the best choice for ear protection, like you would use for flying or shooting.

Your method is the best, attenuate the sound, use external speakers, you can still hear the emergency vehicles, etcetera.

The 3M soft foam plugs I use cut up to 32 dB which is very good.

[emptysea]

So...the Bose 30 features "controllable noise cancellation" where the user can set the level of noise cancellation. So, would one be able to cancel the wind noise and still be able to hear a horn, a siren, or my riding friend Laura yelling "I'M HUNGRY!!" ?

[Rolls_imp]

jedd, we must be on the same channel or something! I just picked up a pair of Bose QuietComfort 20 earbuds, the wired version of the 30 model. The 20's are black friday/cyber monday available for 199 clams. I read good things from Ptero, Cormanus and others on the forum, so I thought I'd try them. Will know more after this weekend and report back on my experience. Also, I fly commercial for work, so even if they don't work out on the bike, they're sure to be a help on the plane. And compact in my travel bag. Good luck.

[Randy B]

Ouch....$300