Bose QC-1 Quiet Comfort Acoustic Noise Canceling Headset.

Manufacturer: Bose Corporation, The Mountain, Framingham, MA 01701

Price: $299.95

Source: Manufacturer loan

The Bose QC-1 Quiet Comfort Acoustic Noise Canceling Headset provides noise canceling and the ability to hear music and/or dialogue in many noisy situations. For a very interesting and effective presentation of this device, I suggest you check the Bose Corporation Website at www.Bose.com. It is a very well designed site, well worth a visit.

My daughter gave me a trip to Great Britain as a birthday present. (If you keep your children around long enough, it pays off.) Unfortunately, she couldn't afford first class, so we didn't get to try out Bose Noise Canceling Headsets provided by some airlines. The flights were noisy, crowded, and unpleasant. My last trip to Great Britain had been on the S.S. United States under much more comfortable conditions and I mourned the passing of the luxurious days of my youth. Escorting my daughter from point to point and place to place, I found myself mourning my lost youth period.

I couldn't recover my youthful verve and energy but I could explore the uses of noise canceling headsets. I contacted Bose and requested a set to test. Initially, I tried them out mowing the lawn. My electric mower isn't the noisiest device in the world but I hate cutting the grass and listening to music seemed a palliative. While I had tried listening to FM on a radio with headphones, the only way I could hear the music was to threaten my hearing with full power and too much distortion.

The Bose Noise Canceling Headset did take care of the noise but wearing them while wrestling with the mower proved a problem as it took me twice as long to mow the lawn. I always seemed to end in the middle of the some lovely piece of music and lost more time waiting for the end. I decided that the headset was at best a mixed blessing.

Finally, I managed to try the Bose Noise Canceling Headset on an airplane. It was an hour flight to Indianapolis in a puddle jumper with propellers. It was very noisy without the Bose and quite manageable with them; however, the flight was very short and was hardly a test for the noise canceling headset.

My daughter decided I hadn't shown her enough of Great Britain so we booked another junket just in time for the onset of Hoof and Mouth disease in England. We flew from Milwaukee to Newark on a crowded and noisy plane fraught with tourists. The Bose canceled the noise and distracted me from the turbulence, which was considerable. Perhaps if I hadn't been enjoying music, I might have noticed that the turbulence was severe enough to make nauseous. I discovered this as soon as I switched off the CD Player and prepared for landing. I decided that I ought to have paid more attention than the state of my stomach than the art of the fugue.

The trip across the Atlantic from Newark was in a full airplane. I'd taken medication to avoid any problem with my stomach and selected a real test for the Bose. I decided to listen to Sir John Gielgud and a BBC radio cast doing King Lear. As we winged our way over the waves, the plane became relatively quiet. However, when I removed the headset or switched off the noise cancellation feature, I was almost painfully aware of how much noise there was from the engines and from the stresses and strains at 40,000 feet. Just to check the in-flight sound, I watched and listened to "Billy Elliot" and while I enjoyed the film, I found the plane's sound system less than perfect.

I found the long crowded flight less than perfect but enjoyed our time in London and environs. When I listened to music in the relative quiet of our hotel room, I found the quality of the Bose Headset was impeccable with no noise to overcome. But I didn't listen to the headset much while touring and visiting. On the return flight, which came all too soon, I shared the phones temporarily with a fellow passenger and my daughter, both of whom agreed that the noise cancellation was significant even without program music.

The movie on the return flight that I watched was "Charlie's Angels." I was amused by the film but quite taken with the quality of the soundtrack. I should note that I had the opportunity to listen to a few lovely pieces of live music in England. I heard vespers sung on Ash Wednesday by a group of Benedictines in the Chapel of Worchester College, Oxford, where they had not sung vespers in 460 years. I also enjoyed the sound of "Chicago" with its spirited score as well as the London production of "Les Miserables."

I can state categorically the Bose Noise Canceling Headset does, indeed, cancel noise. I would suggest that they are a very good investment for those who are going to subject themselves to air travel or to difficult listening conditions. I was not prepared to try them in a bus or railway carriage surrounded by teenagers. There are limits to what I will endure for the sake of high fidelity and the The $ensible Sound.

As I noted the quality of the Bose headset is quite satisfactory even without the noise canceling. They are reasonable isolating so they provide solid bass but not so isolating as to exclude essential sound and messages when one is traveling or needing contact with family or associates. The list price of $299.95 is a lot less than the cost of an upgrade to first class on many flights and to my mind is well worth the price for relative peace and quiet in the air and on the ground.