My Headphone Usage
I’m going to post this on my blog as an experiment. The experiment being that I’m trying to spend less time polishing it compared to my “normal” blog posts, as it started out as a social media (Mastodon) post. Expect some typos and grammatical errors. I tried to make it brief for posting on Mastodon, but it turned out to be a bit long anyway…
Since it comes up with some frequency on autistic social media, I wanted to share my experience with noise cancelling headphones as an noise sensitive autistic person with auditory processing issues. As always, this is just my experience.
When at home or work, I wear my over ear noise cancelling headphones more than not - often with no sound. This is both to reduce background noise (which cost me way more spoons than I realise until later) and to make sudden sharp noises take less spoons. Doing this makes a huge positive difference in my life.
As an example for sharp sudden noises, just the noise from setting two ceramic plates on top of each other is frequently fairly unpleasant without noise cancelling headphones, and with my headphones I normally don’t even notice.
When out and about, which is walking, on bus/tram/train, or shopping etc. I normally wear in-ear headphones. They are either not with active noise cancelling (but noise insulation by their physical design) or low end active noise cancelling. I walk a lot, and rely on hearing to be aware of cars etc.
I have heard women talking about not feeling safe with headphones out and about, which I completely understand and respect. For me I still feel like I hear well enough with the headphones I use that this isn’t a problem (for me personal safety is a whole complicated thing in itself, so I’m not digging further into that right here),
If I have to listen to people, I will normally take the headphones off, at least on ear. I know some have a “talk mode”, but I haven’t tried anywhere that worked well enough to rely on.
One important point for my use of headphones is that a lot of the time I am not listening to anything, but just using them for noise reduction. When I listen, it’s mostly audiobooks, podcasts or the audio track from a video (Youtube, TikTok etc.). I do listen to music some of the time, but not a lot - and my hearing isn’t great. In other words, how great headphones are at making music sounding great is not a primary concern.
One thing which surprised me about active noise cancelling, is that in my experience in ear headphones are actually really similar for good they are at noise cancelling compared to over ear headphones, so if you prefer in-ear headphones - go for that. Many in-ear headphones do, for me, have one significant problem - they are small so much easier to lose.
Anyway, now for the specifics. For home and at work I have two pairs of Bose QC-35 over ear headphones - and they work great for me. I can’t say how many hours I have worn them, but it’s many. The first one I got in December 2018, so more than 5 years ago by now. I got the second pair in November 2021 since they were on sale. Having 2 paris mean I can always have one charged pair and a higher chance of being able to find one of them… For both pairs I have replaced the ear pads. It’s slightly annoying to do, but means a much longer life. Unlike many headphones you can actually get new ear pads, and getting new non-Bose ear pads is not that expensive - and only slightly annoying to put on.
The main big problem with the Bose QC-35 is that it’s discontinued some years ago, so you can’t actually buy them anymore. The second big problem is that Bose has decided to make the naming really confusing so it’s complicated to really find out what’s what in newer models. Also, in my opinion, the Bose QC-45, was slightly worse than the QC-35. The nose cancelling and most else was pretty similar, but the software on the headphones was a bit worse. If you just connect to a single device that may be fine, but I connect to different phones and computers depending on what I do, while that’s not great on the QC-35, it was worse on the QC-45 where if connected to two devices (only one making sound) it would randomly just have sound drops. The QC-45 has since also been replaced, and while I tried to figure out the new series (to see if I may want to look for new ones on sale), I got annoyed with the horrible new naming and lack of details that I just haven’t looked at in a while. If anyone has experience with later models, especially if you also used the QC-35, I would be really interested in hearing what you think.
Out and about I currently have Beats Flex and Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 - depending on which one I can find… The Beats Flex I would not recommend. The user experience is very quirky where it’s annoying to turn on/off and adjust volume. They work OK enough that I keep using them, but they are getting replaced at some point - and not with anything from Beats. The Anker Soundcore works rather well (especially for the price), but they are in ear separate devices (similar to Apple Airpods) and while that’s great for carrying around, I keep losing them as they are too small. Their active noise cancellation works fairly well.
On a final note, I want to mention that I tried Sony WH-1000XM3. I know many other people really like that series, but for me they don’t work well. My main problem is that the controls are touch based and worst that the pause function happens by tapping the headset. When I tap it a small pressure is created in my ear which is unpleasant if I tap very gently, and painful if I tap more forcefully. This of course means I have to be very careful to tap, which just isn’t great - and mean I had to do it multiple times frequently as I didn’t tap hard enough for it to register. The touch for volume up/down worked but just felt annoying compared to physical buttons. Many other people are happy with the headset so these things probably don’t affect most people, but I thought it was worth mentioning, as Sony WH-1000XM series is the most frequently mentioned alternative/competitor to the Bose over ear headphones.
I want to say again that this isn’t intended as a review etc. and as you can probably guess, nothing here is sponsored…
If you have any questions etc. you can reply to my Mastodon post at https://autistics.life/@samantha/112427956178322082.