venta

I'm the sort of anti-social type who sits at my desk all day with headphones on. The lovely pair of Sennheisers I bought well over a decade ago were looking rather shabby by the time I started newJob so they have been promoted sideways to be headphones-plugged-into-the-piano at home. I set off to buy some new ones.

Now, the last pair came from a tiny little audio shop in Reading. They let me faff about trying headphones on for an hour or more, checking whether I could still hear someone talking to me when wearing them, checking that my music didn't leak out to annoy colleagues. Sadly, that shop shut years ago. And the model of headphones is discontinued. Since almost all headphones are uncomfortable for me, there's no way I'm buying without trying. Where does one go to try on headphones these days?

The answer, rather gratifyingly, turns out to be "just about anywhere". John Lewis. HMV. Fopp. ~~Comet~~Dixons. Headphones are everywhere, in a way they really weren't a few years ago. I blame Dr Dre.

However, there is a larger problem. The return of the proper headphone has involved the development of a new style: the "on ear" headphones. Instead of the cans sitting comfily over your ears, they're smaller and sit directly on your ears, which I find painful after about two minutes. Most over-ear headphones wait at least half an hour before they become painful. Anyway almost every pair of headphones readily available in the capital's emporia is "on ear" 'phones. I blame Dr Dre for this, too.

Eventually my questing took me to Selfridge's, which t'tinternet claims is a Sennheiser specialist. Sure enough, there was an over-sized and beautifully comfy pair of headphones. The padding around the ears and along the inside of the band was, however, made of extremely plush velvet. The sort that doesn't slide, and sticks to your hair. By the time I'd pulled them on and off in the shop a couple of times I looked, as

valkyriekaren would put it, like a hen's arse on a windy day.

Since I reckon it's a quid pro quo of wearing 'phones in the office that you can remove them quickly if someone comes to talk to you, they were right out. (Before anyone suggests in-ear headphones, I rule these out for the same reason. I can hit Ctrl-Alt-z[*] and knock the headphones round my neck in the time it takes my nearest neighbour in the office to get one wire out of one ear. And I've never had a pair of earbuds that were comfortable for more than an hour or so.)

The worst pair I tried were noise-cancelling earphones, though I forget which brand. As a means of cancelling background noise they were awesome. However, it turns out that noise-cancellation feels to me exactly the same way walking into a soundproof room feels: oppressive and violently unpleasant. It registers with me as the same sensation of sudden pressure on the ear drums as that caused by deep water or a change in altitude. I could barely rip the 'phones off my head quickly enough.

Anyway, having spent a ridiculously long time prowling round Selfrdige's, I eventually located a lightweight pair of Bose headphones which seem to accommodate my delicate shell-likes admirably. After a month or two's use, I've found that they're not quite as good as the falling-apart Sennheisers for all-day ear-comfort, but they seem like the best of what's available. They're nicely unobtrusive, unlike the ludicrously giant Sennheiser's, and their earpieces fold flat to sit tidily on the desk.

Do any other long-term hearphone-wearers have these problems, or do I just have whingy ears?

[*] Hurrah for Winamp and its brilliantly flexible hotkey mappings. Ctrl-Alt-z on my machine is "pause music", regardless of who has focus.