[Elecraft] Noise Cancelling Headphones

[Edward R Cole]

Several years ago I ordered StennHeiser on-ear noise-cancelling 
headphones for reducing noise on aircraft.  This was not a luxury 
purchase but following orders of my audiologist to protect my hearing 
"always" when flying.

Previously, I had to remove hearing aids and insert foam ear-plugs, 
which meant I was totally deaf for any in-flight conversation.  The 
StennHeiser's cost me about $150, and did reduce noise slightly, but 
were very uncomfortable to wear with hearaids.  Removing hearing aids 
and I was back in my silent incommunicado world.

So I bought the $300 Bose QC2  (QC15 were not made back then) with 
comfortable around-ear muff.  This proved to be a good investment 
later when I upgraded to Phonac OTR hearing aids which would 
absolutely be incompatible with on the ear styles.  I gave my 
StennHeiser to my then-new wife who only used them a couple times.

I have not tried them in the noisy shack when I run the 8877 blower 
(because I am running eme digital modes which are a text mode).  Soon 
I will be trying to run CW eme and the Bose may help a lot to 
minimize blower noise so I can copy extreme weak signals.

BTW I have a pair of Sony MDR-V600 stereo headphones that have done 
good service for copying weak signals for over a decade.  They are 
over the ear muffs which I must use with my OTR hearing aids.

Recently, I have been playing with the NR settings of the K3 to find 
a good compromise with quieting vs distortion of sounds (F1-2 works 
fairly well for me as any distorting of sound makes it harder to 
understand speech).  For weak CW cranking down the bandwidth to 
100-Hz is the best vs NR.  Definition: weak CW < -6 dB SNR...signal 
strengths about -170 dBm.

73, Ed - KL7UW
http://www.kl7uw.com
     "Kits made by KL7UW"
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