Goodbye, cruel sound.

Goodbye, Cruel Sound: I'm impressed by Shure's new E2c in-your-earphones. These are very interesting and effective noise-reducing phones that work acoustically rather than electronically. In fact, you might think of it as natural rather than artificial noise reduction. The idea is simple: put holes in noise-blocking earplugs that will let the listener hear audio from the attached earpiece elements while nicely attenuating sounds from the rest of the world.

Not only is the idea simple, it's effective. I've lived with a couple of active noise-canceling headphones--the Bose QuietComfort and the Koss QuietZone QZ-2000--and both work quite well. But they share common disadvantages that come along with the electronic approach. One is the need for an interface box to hold batteries and circuitry. That interface means that you can't just plug in the phones and use them the way you can with the Shure phones. Instead, you have to turn them on. And, of course, you must occasionally replace those batteries.

Electronic phones inevitably add a bit of electronic noise of their own and make subtle, but noticeable, changes in the music's timbre. These things seemed like the price one had to pay for effective noise reduction.

But with the Shure phones, you don't have to make any such compromises. There are no active electronics to alter the music while they attenuate ambient noise. You don't have to deal with an interface box or replace batteries. You just put the earpieces in your ears and the plug into your sound device and listen.

Well, actually there's a little more to it than that. The E2c phones come with two different kinds of plastic sleeves--foam and flex--in three sizes each. The varied selection lets you fit the phones to your ear canals and your listening preferences. There's also an initial setup in which you install tiny adhesive wax guards to the tips of the earpiece elements. Tweezers are very helpful for this. Fortunately, they don't have to be replaced often.

The proper choice of sleeve, particularly regarding size, is critical to the musical satisfaction and personal comfort you experience with these phones. If you use a size that's too small for your ear canal, there's no bass and the treble takes on a harsh and tinny quality. If you use too large a sleeve, your discomfort will communicate your error in a very short time.

The E2c phones arrive with medium-sized flex sleeves installed, probably for cosmetic reasons. The smooth translucent pliable plastic looks more high-tech than the cylindrical foam plugs. But for me, the foam sleeves both worked better sonically and were more comfortable and secure to wear. You'll make your own choice, of course. Once you do that correctly, you'll enjoy musically satisfying, non-fatiguing sound and considerable physical comfort.

Because of my current geographic location and the time of year, I haven't been able to make the traditional power lawn mower test of noise reduction and I haven't had an opportunity to take the Shure E2c phones on an airplane, either. But day-to-day household use and outdoor use convince me that they are at least as effective at ambient noise attenuation as competing electronic models. The E2c phones are also significantly more musical-sounding than the electronic competition, don't add their own noise, and with an MSRP of $99, sell for a fraction of the price of the more complex electronic models (www.shure.com).