Travel Headphones Suggestions

[Mr Peabody]

I commute on the bus everyday and bought a pair of Sennheiser. I forget the model but they ran around $60.00 and fold up. Two very good points about these headphones for traveling, they seal to your ear very well and keep noise out and they sound very good. They fold and come with a hard shell carry case. However, I've never been able to fold them to wear they would go back into the case. But I'm afraid to break them so I may be overly careful which prevents me from accomplishing the task. They also don't leak sound out either. If you are familiar with Senn's, these portables don't have as big of soundstage or the frequency range of their big brothers but they're a fraction of the price and smaller drivers. These have a very nice bass response if you like a tight deep bass. Of course, this type of description is heavily dependent on what you use to drive them. I listened to them on home equipment and still found the bass to have similar character. In fact, I had to give these about 24 hours of break in before they started sounding right. These aren't "noise cancelling" headphones but when wearing them on a city bus they are capable of keeping out the bus roar and all the other conversations around me. With no music I can hear people but I have to remove the headphones to carry on a conversation with anyone. The larger models of Senns sound incredible to me and are comfortable but they are open air design which leaks sound out and will disturb people around you. I have a pair of 580's for the bedroom and my wife tells me I might as well just listen to the speakers.

[emorphien]

I commute on the bus everyday and bought a pair of Sennheiser. I forget the model but they ran around $60.00 and fold up.

Those sound like Sennheiser PX-200s. Let me say they are pretty much worthless on an airplane. My E2cs went back to Shure since they were worn out, and I sorely missed them Tuesday when I flew to visit my family for Thanksgiving. I'm not looking forward to the flight back without my E2cs. The Senns can't isolate your ears well enough, but the Shures can cut out airplane sounds quite effectively so you don't have to turn them up so loud you might go deaf.

The PX-200s work on a bus or train but would be awful on a plane. I ended up giving up on listening to music and just played sudoku on my iriver.