CES: Sony Debuts The World’s First Digital Noise-Cancelling Earbuds

LAS VEGAS — More on the noise-cancelling front: Sony has taken the trick tech of their award-winning, $400, MDR-NC500D digital noise-cancelling headphones and dropped them into these tiny new buds.

Like its big brother, the MDR-NC300D uses artificial intelligence to sense then adapt to the type of background noise occurring in the user’s environment; Sony claims an impressive 98.7 98.4 percent noise-reduction. Tne control unit also has a switch that adjusts the sound to one of three settings (anyone remember the bright yellow Sony MEGABASS swicthes?): Movie, Bass, or Normal.

While my rather limited experiences with the NC300D’s bigger brother never fails to amaze me whenever I try them on, the jury’s still on the little guys. The noise-cancelling feature didn’t seem as impressive; plus, you have to deal with the unit’s control dongle — which is bigger than some mp3 players out there.

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About the author

When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Mac's technology editor. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of Wired.com and BIKE Magazine, among others. Hang with him on Twitter.

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Posted in CES 2010, Music |

http://www.szilveszter.ca WS
I thought that dongle WAS an DAP… crazy big… too big!
Matthew
On the sony website it says 98.4%, not 98.7%….just saying :)
And @WS….thats what she said.
Eli Milchman
WS, that was exactly my reaction.
Matthew, you’re absolutely right…and you’ve won an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii for two!!
Uh…no, hang on â€” boss is gesticulating wildly and purple spots are breaking out all over his face. Hmmm…guess I can’t do that. But we appreciate the fact-checking.
porkchop1234
I’ve demoed the NC500D and wasn’t at all surprised to find they sound like complete shit. Matter of fact most Sony cans sound like total shit and considering these NC300D’s are based off their big brother NC500D they will probably sound as shitty if not shittier. The only award the 500D should receive is the award for being one of the most over priced shitty headphones on the market.
Just because you pay 4 bills doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have good sound and it never fails to amaze me that in the speaker business (especially headphones) how much overpriced garbage is on the shelves. Sony should one day try to concentrate on producing a good headphone speaker and forget about their next to useless noise canceling technology which brings nothing to the table when you have a shit sound coming from the headphone speaker.
http://www.theusesofliteracy.com duncan
Impressive scatological post porkchop.
porkchop1234
Thank you I try to make my posts memorable for all ^_-