Hooked.

[mdlbear]

While my Mom was here (she went home to Florida this morning), she had me try out her noise-cancelling headphones. While I couldn't see spending the $300 her Bose set cost, I found a pretty damned good set by Phillips at Fry's for $70. They also have Coby 'phones, normally $40, for $18. They're not quite as effective, and sit on top of the ear rather than around it like the Phillips, but if other family members like them I'll pick up a couple more.

They have a frequency range of 100-1000 Hz, and seem to be pretty effective on the fan and air conditioning noise I have at work and in my home computer room. A further advantage of the Phillips phones over some of the others (including the Bose) is that the switch is on a pendant along with the battery. This means it's easy to turn off the noise cancellation without taking off the phones.

So far I haven't used them on a sound source, just for noise cancelling. Anything else is a bonus.