Noise cancelling headphone : booze or Sennheiser?!

[Jaedub]

<font color='#000000'>I'm looking to purchase a good pair of noise cancelling headphones soon but am somewhat confused about what brand to go with. While reading through other forums on this topic, two names keep on popping up: Sennheiser and booze. And there seem to be good arguments for both. From what I hear, booze is super expensive and has a lot of white noise during times of low background sound, but despite these two weaknesses, people still say it's worth the money. Now I really don't know much about Sennheiser but its HD 280PRO seems pretty impressive. A noise attenuation of 32 dB and a $230 drop in price (compared to the booze QuietComfort Headset)? What kind of noise attenuation does booze offer? Is it higher than 32 dB? I can't seem to find that spec info anywhere. There are couple of brands that I haven't done too much research in such as Etymotic and Grado.

So basically I'm looking for a good pair of closed headphones that will allow me to hear EVERYTHING clearly in my music, from the lowest bass to the highest treble and that will offer me the same extremely low background noise level both in a noisy plane and in a quiet library and can be plugged into portable CD player as well as a HI-FI system. Now does such a perfect set of headphones exist that meets all that criteria? or am I dreaming? Audiophiles I need your advice...</font>

 

[Jaedub]

<font color='#000000'>okay for some reason this computer or site won't allow me to type &quot;B O S E&quot; it automatically changes the word to &quot;booze.&quot;  But you know what I'm talking about: b o s e</font>

 

[Guest]

<font color='#000000'>I haven't auditioned either the B-O-O-Z-E (don't you know the other spelling is a four-letter word?!) or the Sennheiser noise cancelling headphones, but consider two things:

1. Sennheiser makes some nice 'phones. Their reputation is good. I've listened to two or three over the years and liked them, not as much as Grados or Stax but they sounded quite good and were comfortable to wear.

2 Booze doesn't publish specifications. Not for their speakers either. They use the ubiquity of their name to sell their product, with no quantitative data to support their claim of &quot;better sound through research.&quot; They've researched the field of marketing, all right. Buyer beware.</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000000'>This article should at least rule out one of the manufacturers:

Marketing Influences on the Government</font>

 

[Jaedub]

<font color='#000000'>booze doesn't publish their specs? &nbsp;How in the world would the consumers accurately compare their products against others. &nbsp;I don't know too much about Stax headphones, but will check them out. &nbsp;

That's quite an article hawke, I'm definitely leaning more towards the Sennheisers now. &nbsp;$299 was way out of my budget anyway. &nbsp;

Does anyone have suggestions for what pair of noise-cancelling headphones to get?</font>

 

[duff]

<font color='#000000'>My friend has a pair of Sonys that he likes and work pretty well, but I have no point of comparison to the Senheissers or anything else for that matter.
Take them all for a test run if you can.</font>

 

[Guest]

<font color='#000000'>&quot;booze doesn't publish their specs? &nbsp;How in the world would the consumers accurately compare their products against others.&quot;

By using their ears.</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000000'>Haha... that's exactly true - sometimes!

I have to say, they have a really great system of dazzling people with their acoustically-treated rooms.

A business acquiantance of mine just dropped $3000 on a booze lifestyle system (yes, I politely advised against this, yes I was ignored). I watched in mock horror as this person walked in, asked a few completely insignificant questions, and walked out (without ever really listening to the system) with his $3000 purchase. The purchase would have been $125 cheaper, but of course, you have to spend extra for the wall brackets for the cubes.

The really funny thing is when the lady said that the $500 price difference between 2 advertised systems was due to the more expensive system had even SMALLER speakers (made with magical &quot;neodymium magnets&quot. So the 1&quot; cubes (paper cones also? Don't know, couldn't even remove the grill...) are now more expensive than the 2&quot; cubes...

$3000 without even listening. It's an amazing marketing machine. When the lady asked if we'd like the system carted out to our car, I replied with mock surprise: &quot;You mean that price doesn't include installation?&quot;

I did some quick &quot;gorilla-math&quot; and guestimated out that the actual selling price of the receiver, aplifier and speakers probably should be around $375.

Listening with their ears indeed!</font>

 

[Jaedub]

<font color='#000000'>Hey thanks for advice you guys.  I'm definitely not getting a pair of booze headphones now after reading all the bad reviews.  I guess the only thing to do now is to go to a retailer and try out the 280s.  Here's something I've been wondering: has anyone ever compared the Sennheiser HD 280 to noise cancelling headphones?  With an attenuation of 32dB it seems to beat out the Noisebuster and Senn's PXC 250 (with NoiseGard tech) which only have a 10-15dB attenuation.  

Can passive noise attenuation be more effective than active?

Is there any online place that carries the HD 280 SILVER &nbsp;headphones? &nbsp;I've only been able to find the black ones.</font>