The Hindu : Front Page : Celebrating the `sound of silence'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 04, 2007
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Celebrating the `sound of silence'

Special Correspondent

Bangalore: It must be one of the rare ironies of audio technology: The flagship product of arguably the most elite brand in the headphones business is valued for the sound it cuts out, rather than what it conveys.

The Bose Quiet Comfort headphones — whose third iteration in seven years has just been launched in India — was co-developed by Amar G. Bose, the founder (and at 78, still a very active Chairman) of the U.S.-based Bose Corporation.

When he was still Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Bose was inspired to exploit the technology of `noise cancelling' — that is analysing the surrounding noise and neutralising it by creating an `equal and opposite' noise — when he found it difficult to listen to his music player in aircraft.

The first award-winning Bose headphones, which fought noise with noise, were made for civilian and military pilots in 1989. Two years later, Dr. Bose launched the first consumer version of QuietComfort — for lay users who sometimes needed to shut out the annoying noises of everyday life. Even while driving ambient sounds especially the bass notes to almost zero, the phones also provided superior audio quality when coupled with good music players.

The latest QuietComfort 3 headphones that The Hindu was enabled to try out provide a better fit than earlier versions which tended to be rather heavy on the head.

The `active' noise cancelling has been improved by developments on the micro-chip that sits inside and the `passive' noise cancelling has been beefed up by better selection for the ear cups.

The TriPort on-ear headphones which cost Rs. 8,200 also cut out some, but not all the ambient noise but they have no special electronics to do this. The in-ear headphones (Rs. 5,000) seem like a lot of money to listen to your MP3 player or iPod.

Dr. Bose has just been named for the Distinguished Service Citation 2007 by the (U.S) Automobile Hall of Fame — for a generation of audio systems for cars.

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