Lyle‘s post about headphones at work reminded me. I need to rant about headphones. I bought a new pair for use at work the other day (Sennheiser HD477s – I like Sennheiser’s sound very much) because I either tended to leave my headphones at work when I needed them at home, or at home when I needed them at work.
I have issues with headphones – now, Sennheiser and their pals can make the most glorious, wonderful pieces of audio technology, capable of wonderfully balanced, warm, crisp sound reproduction with a seriously impressive dynamic range considering the size of the drivers and cones. However, they can’t make the damn things comfortable enough to wear for more than about 10 minutes without it feeling like someone has clamped your head in a vice and is slowly but surely winding it tighter and tighter.
Worse, no headphone manufacturer ever seems to consider that anyone using their headphones might be wearing glasses – every pair I’ve tried presses the arms of your glasses tight in against the side of your head, right against the pressure points just in from of your ear.
Also, my older pair of Sennheiser HD200s are a closed back, circumaural design with faux-leather material for the pads. Which means that after about five minutes of wear my ears are baking hot and dripping with sweat. This newer pair are better in that respect as they have open backs and an absorbant material for the pads (but being open-backed, their sound isolation is considerably worse than the HD200s).
I can’t wear in-ear headphones at all. They cause me immense pain and bring on a grinding headache very soon after I start to use them (plus, the audio fidelity is generally rubbish and they leak sound like crazy). Those oh-so-fashionable neck-band headphones that all the cool kids wear these days are about as useful as a tin-can and a bit of string.
What I ideally want is an individual, soundproof office in which I can stick a monster hi-fi cranked up to 11 and listen to my music in comfort without bothering others. Somehow, I don’t think head office will go for that one, though.
Hmmm – not sure about the sound-proofed office; can’t see Finchley going for that. Personally I’d settle for a nice pay review, but that’s just me. Where was I? Oh yeah – the point of this post… could you, like, wear the arms of your glasses on the outside of the arms of the headphones?!?!?
Short answer – no, you can’t. It’s even more awkward than the pressure thing.