In the waiting room at work there’s all these people with no etiquette who play their stupid games or watch videos on their cellphones at high volume. Asking them to be quiet is a pain (I get ignored basically.)
Anyway one day I got fed up and went to get an extra pair of Sennheisers I had lying about. When people were being noisy I would put on a fake smile and then ask if they want to borrow a headset. Nobody has ever taken me up on the offer - in fact, they frequently then get a little embarassed, then say “oh no no it’s ok I’m done”. Not once do they get pissy or aggressive back. I accidentally stumbled on the most diplomatic way to get people to stop people from being noisy on their phones.
So, semi-related anecdote. Years ago I worked for a company that refurbished office electronics. Things like PC’s, old typewriters, copy machines, etc. There were a TON of items that came from offices that allowed smoking inside.
They smelled as horrible as you can imagine. Most of the metal and glass items were easily cleaned with normal cleaning products. But the plastics absorbed odors. We would disassemble them as much as possible and soak them in hot soapy water with baking soda mixed in quite liberally. Then follow that with a wash, rinse and dry and then reassemble the items.
It was a pain, but it worked pretty well on the odor. That has led to me understanding that you should never put anything plastic near a constant source of odor like that. Besides the foam on your headphones, I’m willing to bet the plastics absorbed some of that as well. Hopefully the clorox treatment was what cleaned that part up.
I should note that I use a similar technique now on my large cutting boards and butcher block. If they have lingering odors I scrub them with soapy water and baking soda almost to a paste form, then rinse them and pat them dry. It works VERY well.
Even though Bose has been overpriced crap for as long as I can remember, I can concur: the noise cancelling feature on these things really works. I was super skeptical but I have done indoors and outdoors testing and it’s … quite effective. Noticeably so!
The wire cutter article elaborates, and their testing was quite thorough, but yeah, if you want noise reduction these Bose models are about the only ticket.
I wiped my headphones with baby wipes a few times and the thin outer layer of the foam pads started peeling off in little chunks. So I’m not sure I would advise anyone to do that. YMMV.
It’s not just the noise reduction. They handle Bluetooth connections better than any headset I’ve had before, the battery indication is extremely helpful, and the earpiece is as comfortable as any of the premium brands, if not more so. My only complaint is that it’s not quite as clever at automatically switching on/off as my Sony headset was, but the flipside is it’s better at handling being turned on and off manually and reconnecting automatically.
I have wired ones also, the over the ear model. You need to remember to turn them off, which is weird for wired headphones. The noise cancellation continues working even when you aren’t actively playing sound. The noise cancellation really is freaking amazing on an airplane.
