…can be a tricky thing. For many years I’ve had a pair of Sennheiser HD 515 headphones which have been lovely. I have used them a lot, replaced the pads once and they’re due for another set. I dropped them a year or so back and the casing had cracked but sound was still fab. To wear them, I usually removed my hearing aids and pumped the sound up. The downside was that sound leaked and recently I had an incident on a plane where the person behind asked me to turn them down.

Part of the issue is finding headphones with a big enough cavity so that I can leave my hearing aids in comfortably, the other part is reducing the amount of sound that “leaks” out. In recent months I’ve been trying out lots of headphones trying to find the right balance. Not entirely unexpectedly I’ve ended up back at Sennheiser. I had initially settled on a pair of HD 280 Pro as they seemed pretty close to ideal. I was in JB on the weekend and they happened to have 20% off on headphones and was prepared to get the 280. Then I noticed they had another unit set up for trying out: Sennheiser 380 Pro. They were only $3 more than the lower model but the design pushed them against the head and reduced the sound leakage significantly, Plus they come with a flattened carry case which means they’re easy to travel with. With the JB discount, they ended up being $159. Sold.

Wearing them now while my partner watches TV behind me and no complaints so far. Currently “bopping” to Ministry’s Just One Fix. Happy days. Will see how they go on the flight to Adelaide on Sunday.

Update: my partner didn’t hear them at all even though she was sitting a foot behind me. With them on, I didn’t hear any external noises either so there seems to be some sort of noise cancelling/insulation thang going on.