Thoughts about trying to use in-ear headphones higher than gas station quality
I wrote a few weeks ago about getting in-ear headphones that were a little nicer than the type you tend to get with rubber tips in a gas station. (The ones that are better than a gas station or CVS purchase are apparently called in-ear monitors.)
For the last two years, when it comes to walkin'-around audio-listening, I used almost exclusively "bone-conducting" headphones that I'd originally bought for cycling. Before that, I only ever used big-ass over-ear headphones. This is the first time in my life I've seriously tried to use in-ear anythings.
I was eventually able to figure out which tips I needed for each ear. This took me a while because my ears are so different, and I wasn't used enough to wearing this kind of headphone to be able to quickly tell whether something was working out or not.
I wore them on a short trip this weekend with airplane flights and they were pretty damn good at blocking out airplane sound. I've spent the last two years flying and riding trains only with the completely open bone-conducting headphones, which only compete with loud travel noises... I definitely had an "oh, I've been such an idiot" moment when I realized what a difference "real" headphones would make on large, loud vehicles.
I have used them for listening to some music every day, but honestly I'm mostly using them to just listen to podcasts. With that qualification... they don't seem to sound any better than the headphones I use for work. These were Salnotes Zeroes, and for day to day work, I use HyperX bluetooth headphones. I'm not a sophisticated listener or anything, but I don't think I have any significant hearing damage, but I think pretty much the only meaningful benefit I was getting from these headphones was not so much audio quality as simply blocking out other noises.
I've never used active noise cancelling headphones partially because I have a lot of devices on my body which can beep or alarm when they require my attention, and it hasn't seemed wise to block that out. So this might be the best "noise cancelling" I can dare to give myself right now, haha.