My earlier experience with noise reducing headsets started with the venerable Sony MDR-NC10…which I simply loved, and had several sets over the years. I found them both comfortable to wear and very effective. The concept of soft rubber-tipped ear buds that form a noise blocking seal into the ear canal was simply brilliant.
Plantronics .Audio 480 headset with accessories & carrying case
Plantronics .Audio 480s are in some ways very similar as they have soft replaceable tips that seal into the ear canal. The headset comes with four set of tips, three different sizes of soft rubber tips and one set of foam tips. Between these you’re sure to find a set that fits well while remaining comfortable.
I must admit I’ve always preferred telephone headsets that have a boom-mounted microphone. Cell phone style headsets with the mic in a lump on the cord have never impressed me. Nor have those where the mic is mounted in the earpiece.
On one side of the headset you’ll find a soft plastic tab that fits into the ridges of the outer ear. This serves to keep the headset positioned at a fixed angle and allows you to have a microphone boom that will stay at the desired vertical position near the mouth.
The microphone is mounted at the end of a stiff yet bendable metal boom that is rooted into the base of the left side ear bud. The boom is rooted at the base of the left ear bud in a ring which allows the boom to easily move vertically up or down. In fact, while using the headset to listen to music I simply flipped the boom up so that the mic was positioned well out of the way near the top of my head. I found this both convenient and practical. It kept people from thinking me daft at me for wearing a phone headset a long while, but not actually being on the phone.
While the mic might be boom-mounted there is still a significant line-lump in the headset cord. This metal tube holds a sliding volume control and a mic mute switch. There are two other small metalic tubes inline with the cord. These protect the points where the left and right earbud wires joint the main line, and also where the mic and headset feeds split near the laptop end of the cord. The cord length is short, implying that the headset is intended for use with a laptop positioned directly in front of the user.
The headset and its accessories come packaged with a rectangular leather-like carrying case with magnetic closures. This has proven handy for keeping the unit from becoming a tangled mess in my laptop bag. I initially worried that the magnetic closure might impact some of the contents of my bag. My frequent flier cards have magnetic data stripes, but so far none have been impacted by sharing my bag with the Plantronics headset.
As mentioned earlier I’m already familiar with wearing earbuds that completely occlude the ear canal. Both the Sony MDR-NC10’s and Etymotic ER-6i’s fit this way. I find that both are comfortable even for long term music listening. While not quite as comfortable as those other two, the .Audio 480 is reasonably comfortable. I found that I had to use the largest of the soft rubber tips to get a good fit. Even then the ear buds did not seal as quite well as my trusty Etymotic headset.
That said this was the only headset that I’ve been carrying for the past couple of months, and a major blessing when I found myself seated in front of a couple loud, chatty young girls on a flight from PHX to IAH. I was able to load up a couple of podcasts and suppress their mindless banter for the duration.
Since the 480 that I received is simply an analog headset to the PC there is little or no setup. The device was instantly recognized by the host platform. I’m using two hosts with the .Audio 480: an HP8510p laptop and an HP Mini 2140 net book. Outside of setting some audio levels it worked perfectly in both cases.
There is another version of the headset that comes with a USB audio interface. The headset itself is the same. The USB audio adapter merely provides a means of connecting to the host platform in the event that it doesn’t have analog audio interfaces. In the past I’ve used such USB audio interfaces in conjunction with a headset when recording screencast tutorials on server class PCs.
My laptop bag and luggage normally contains a number of gadgets and related accessories, including a Sony MD-EX150 whisperlite wired headset for my cell phone, a Blackberry 8100 (aka Pearl.) Alas, the Sony headset, with a single 2.5mm plug, doesn’t work with either my laptop or net book. This is where the Plantronics headset fits into my plans. It also marks the first time that I have carried a headset specifically for VoIP use.
As it lives in my laptop bag I primarily use the 480 while traveling, although I did use it a little around the house just after the holidays. Thus my wife was able to see that I appreciated her insight into my VoIP mania.
NOTE TO ALL GOOD HUSBANDS: Using a noise reducing headset in the presence of one’s spouse is not necessarily wise as it can block spousal attempts at conversation. This can only be forgiven when the aforesaid headset was a gift and your appreciation is expressed in your enthusiastic use of the gift — having said this perhaps only using it once in your spouses presence to express gratitude is the best course of action … if you value your familial bliss.
I used the headset in combination with a number of different VoIP clients including Gizmo5, Skype 4.0 and a pre-release version of Counterpath’s Eyebeam v1.5. All three are wideband capable soft phones that would prove a good test of the frequency response of the 480 in telephony applications.
Further, I decided that I could use the 480 for listening to music and podcasts as I travel, the headsets 1/8” mini-plug for the headset being a match to my Sansa E-series MP3 player. In this role I found that the 480 sounded better than expected. Not outstanding, but good enough for many people. It was not quite as comfortable as my recently lost (and more expensive) Etymotic ER-6i’s, nor as effective in the noise reduction arena, but it sounded fine to my middle-aged ears.
Wearing the Plantronics .Audio 480 on a flight to SFO, listening to podcasts as I write.
When used with a soft phone the headset proved to be very good. The microphone was easily positioned and yet stayed in place once adjusted. The ear buds were reasonably comfortable and did a fair job of blocking ambient noise. I found that the larger tips fit me well, but the foam tips provided the best noise suppression.
Initially I was surprised by the complete lack of side-tone (side-tone is essentially the sound of your own voice heard back to you through the earpiece of the phone or headset). The effect of noise reducing headphones is to suppress the sound of everything except what is heard through the headphones. So while using the 480 you don’t hear much of your own voice, and that feels strange at first.
It would be interesting for a soft phone maker to provide an ability to inject side-tone into the headset feed if the user desired.
Spectral display of my voice as recorded with the .Audio 480 (click for larger image)
To evaluate whether the headset was able to deliver actually deliver the promised performance of G.722 based wideband telephony I recorded a sample of my voice into Cool Edit Pro. Cool Edit has a nice feature that allows us to visualize both the waveform and the spectral content of the recording. The graph clearly shows energy distribution well over 7 kHz, with some sibilance over 8 kHz. Based on this I’d say that the headset is a good match for wideband capable soft phones.
In February I made a point of joining a couple of the weekly VoIP Users Conference calls using the 480 and Eyebeam v1.5, connecting to the ZIPDX wideband conference bridge. I was very happy with the performance of the headset in both of these circumstances. Although I found the cord on the 480 to be too short for use with a desktop PC for a long conference call, it is the ideal length for use with a laptop, which is clearly the manufacturers intended application.
On those days I that I used the 480 I don’t think that anyone on the VUC call noticed that I wasn’t using my Polycom IP650 until I mentioned it. In fact, listening back to the conference recordings, the 480 sounded better than the cheapo T-100 headset that I’ve been using on the IP650.
Its basic performance being pretty good, there were a couple of things about the 480 I found to be less than ideal. First, I’m not in love with all the metal accoutrement positioned along the cord. It seems to me that the volume control and mute switch are both superfluous, given that the headset is typically used with a soft phone. Both could be jettisoned in favor of the controls in the soft phone client, leaving the cord clean and uncluttered.
I would have also liked to have tried the 480 with my cell phone or a cordless DECT handset. The fact that the signals are broken out into a pair of 1/8” mini-jacks made this impractical. Given the metal ferrule protecting the point in the cord where the microphone & speaker signals are split I’d have preferred that the audio connectors be inter-changeable. The ferrule could serve as a disconnect point, allowing me to change to a 3 conductor 1/8” or 3/32” sub-mini connector when required. That would make the headset more broadly adaptable to various applications beyond soft phones, although it would likely imply mono audio in both ears in some cases.
In perhaps the ultimate testament to its performance, I continue to use the .Audio 480. It appears to be more durable than a lot of common ear bud headsets. Where lightweight plastics are typical in this class of product the 480 seems to be built to last, with more use of metal plated or rubber coated parts.
The combination of noise reducing ear buds and a microphone for telephony applications make the Plantronics .Audio 480 both novel and unique. With a street price under $40 it’s a good value, around half the price of some other noise reducing headsets. It might not be the sort of thing that everyone needs, but it may well the the perfect solution for road warriors who make a lot of use of soft phones. It’s not perfect, but it is serving me well in those cases where I am using a soft phone on the road and has been key in allowing me to enjoy the benefits of wideband telephony while traveling.
Many thanks to my wife Estella for editorial assistance.