Active Noise-Canceling Headsets In Server Rooms?

An anonymous reader asks: "Recently I co-located our computer room to a temporary hosting facility. It's a big shop, with everything you could want, along with quite a high dB of background noise. I've no desire to wear those silly little yellow earplugs for several hours when I'm on site there, and standard headsets are such non-IT apparel. Given that technology is the cure to many of todays evils I was wondering if any people had experimented with active noise canceling headphones and has something to say about them. Does anyone use any active noise canceling headsets in a computer room or data facility, and if so how good are they?"

at best, good

[yagu]

I've owned and sampled various active noise cancellation headphones. At best, I've found them to be good. At worst I've found them totally ineffective.

To attenuate high dB environments, I'd consider the "good" of headphones I've tried to be less than satisfactory, i.e., my subjective evaluation has been about a 10 dB or so drop in levels, good, but if you're looking to get rid of noise these won't do that. If the room is loud enough, I think they'd only lessen the noise to barely acceptable levels.

You mentioned you don't want to wear the silly yellow ear plugs... there are some available in other silly colors. ;-) On the other hand, you aren't likely to be anymore comfortable with headphones on the whole time, and you're going to look no less silly. I've found earplugs to be quite effective, and they're something you can get used to.

If you're looking to "use" headphones, i.e., listen to music, you might consider various ear-canal headphones. I own a pair of those, and aside from the amazing sound quality of the music, I get about a 30dB attenuation of ambient noise. Two birds with one stone. YMMV.

Good luck!

SAGE has info on this

[Saint Aardvark]

Check out the SAGE sysadmin toolbox [sage.org] page, and scooch down to "What's the scoop on hearing protectors and noise-cancelling headsets?". (The whole damn page is useful, too...)

Warning! The Sound Pressure is still there.

[Banner]

Noise canceling headsets can damage your ears. The sound pressure in a loud environment is still there, even if you can't hear it. If you are in a loud environment, one loud enough to damage your hearing, wear earplugs!!!

So while turning up the power on the headset will make the noise you can hear 'go away' the damage is still being done.