Nepenthe
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2005
- Posts
- 633
- Likes
- 15
I work for a large brokerage and investment firm. I work in a building that houses 3500 of our employees, many of them phone reps or processors. I myself am a director in a support/technology division, but I work on a floor with mostly processing reps (people who process requests and paperwork on the computer all day).
Many of these folks listen to music 30 or 40 hours a week. So they're putting in some major listening time. And what do they use for listening? I've been conducting a visual survey lately:
1. cheap earbuds (such as the ones that come with MP3 players)
2. $3 headphones issued by our company, mostly for the purpose of occasionally listening to short video clips from management, or training modules, or recorded phone calls
The latter are absolutely dreadful in terms of both sound quality and comfort. They're worse than mid 80s Walkman 'phones by a wide margin, and my ears start to hurt after having them on for more than a few minutes. The padding is minimal. The drivers have trouble reproducing any sounds below 140 Hz or above 6000 Hz.
And yet, week after week I see a number of people wearing these seemingly all day long! I just want to send out a floor-wide email letting them know that they *could* spring for $35 PX100s or any number of vastly more comfortable implements. I would expect people who spend a good 30% of their waking hours with headphones on to be much more demanding of those headphones.
It's safe to say if I had this amount of time to spend listening at work, I'd be extremely interested in getting the most comfort and nicest sound possible. Seems like a no-brainer, like a worthwhile investment in listening pleasure and luxury. But I've seen not a single person with anything better than stock earbuds or the company-issued crap.
That's all. Just a little frustrating I guess. Can you relate?
Many of these folks listen to music 30 or 40 hours a week. So they're putting in some major listening time. And what do they use for listening? I've been conducting a visual survey lately:
1. cheap earbuds (such as the ones that come with MP3 players)
2. $3 headphones issued by our company, mostly for the purpose of occasionally listening to short video clips from management, or training modules, or recorded phone calls
The latter are absolutely dreadful in terms of both sound quality and comfort. They're worse than mid 80s Walkman 'phones by a wide margin, and my ears start to hurt after having them on for more than a few minutes. The padding is minimal. The drivers have trouble reproducing any sounds below 140 Hz or above 6000 Hz.
And yet, week after week I see a number of people wearing these seemingly all day long! I just want to send out a floor-wide email letting them know that they *could* spring for $35 PX100s or any number of vastly more comfortable implements. I would expect people who spend a good 30% of their waking hours with headphones on to be much more demanding of those headphones.
It's safe to say if I had this amount of time to spend listening at work, I'd be extremely interested in getting the most comfort and nicest sound possible. Seems like a no-brainer, like a worthwhile investment in listening pleasure and luxury. But I've seen not a single person with anything better than stock earbuds or the company-issued crap.
That's all. Just a little frustrating I guess. Can you relate?
