If you fly a lot you’ll see more and more people wearing their own headphones, usually active noise cancelling.
My first experience with noise canceling headphones came the first year United flew the new Boeing 777. Upgraded to business class, the headphones were nicer and had a noise cancellation switch. It made a noticeable difference.
Active noise cancellation headphones work using a small microphone to listen to the outside noise then generate a sound pattern that neutralizes that noise as it reaches your ear.
The gold standard for noise cancellation headphones has been the Bose Quiet Comfort 2 at around $300. I actually think Able Planet’s Clear Harmony headphones have better sound because their digital signal processing is more sophisticated.
Of course a $300 set of headphones you may leave on a plane doesn’t fit in everyone’s budget. My first pair of active noise cancelling headphones were $50 from AWAI. They gave me a noticeable improvement, subjectively 80% of what I got from top of the line Bose. I’ve tried several similarly priced headphones and found them to be roughly comparable
While trying a pair of Senheiser XX-250 noise canceling headphones that were light and didn’t cover the ear, I realized they did a great job if I held them against my ears. But just wearing them let noise leak in around the ear. I understand the new Quiet Comfort 3 have a similar issue.
At the Consumer Electronics Show that year I had a chance to try a pair of Shure E3c in-ear headphones. They weren’t active noise cancelling, they are called noise isolation, but they did an amazing job of blocking out the show noise. The pair I have flown with the last two years have worked flawlessly (and they are very small).
Not everyone can wear in-ear headphones, they find them uncomfortable and I’m sure certain ear conditions make in-ear headphones unsuitable. I can. I’m not sure I would ever go back to regular headphones. I find them more comfortable (once you get used to having something stuck in your ear). I can even sleep wearing them, something I could never do with traditional headphone.
The next year at CES I was talking to the Shure people and they shared a paper written by Virginia Tech that showed that noise isolation headphones outperformed active noise cancellation headphones, a result I find empirically accurate.
I’ve tried a number of inexpensive in-ear headphones (as low as $10 from a Chinese vendor at CES that actually were pretty good but I’ve never seen them in the US retail market). While the sound quality is “ok,” and I’m no audiophile, most don’t have enough options on their ear buds to get a good seal. The vModa headphones have good sound but “leak.” Isolation is the name of the game as far as I’m concerned.
My current favorites are the Etymotic 6i isolation headphones, they came with a selection of ear buds (Available at Amazon). Same noise isolation as my E3c’s (lost on an airplane), but they deliver much better sound quality.
Noise canceling/isolation headphones are “the only way to fly.” Being on only one flight with the screaming baby 3 rows back will convince you. They are also great when you need to concentrate at the office or some other noisy environment.