Day 9 - Music via headphones

I finally got a chance to try out some fidelity tests with some music and my headphones.

I'm used to taking out my old BTE hearing aids when listening to music with headphones. This was going to be different since I can't take the Lyrics out to plug them in.

I currently use Sony noise canceling ear-plug style earphones. These earphones block out a lot of outside sounds by virtue of their plug-style design. They also feature a microphone on each ear-bud which processes the outside noise and then feeds in anti-noise to cancel it out. I only use the noise-canceling feature when I’m in noisy environments though such as airplanes.

To start the test I left my Lyrics on at their usual level 4 volume. I placed the ear-buds in my ears and turned on my iPod. The music sounded really clear, but was missing some low frequencies and sounded a little artificial like it was being pumped through a couple of speakers, (which I guess it technically was).

I took the earphones out and put the Lyrics into Sleep mode and tried again. The results were MUCH better. I heard the lower frequencies much better and the sound was more natural. I can only attribute this to a different amplification pattern during sleep mode along with the possibility that the higher volume was allowing more of the natural sound to "leak" through the Lyrics instead of just being processed by the Lyrics themselves.

I didn't notice much of a difference as far as understanding speech or the words during my test, so it doesn't seem like the Lyrics were changing much from what I'm used to hearing. Part of the problem may be the kind of music I listen to :)

I did find that the ear-plug style design was not able to be inserted as far as usual due to interference from the Lyrics. Still, they seemed to be doing their job well in blocking out the outside noise. I'm going to look for a pair of the larger Over the Ear headphones to see how they sound compared to my earplug style.

Overall I was pretty happy with the test. Nothing will be as good as natural hearing, but this seems a pretty reasonable compromise for the benefits they provide.