A year or so ago I bought audio headphones from Sony (Fontopia) that
impressed me greatly with their small size and audio quality.
Furthermore, they block out most external sound.

So I got to thinking about whether something like this would be a good
alternative to heavy and uncomfortable headsets for flying.

Lo and behold, there are now a few headsets out on the market that are
variations on this theme - extremely light, in-ear. Supposedly as good of
noise reduction, passively, as many ANR headsets.

Yet I can't find any actual reviews of these headsets anywhere.

So for a recent long x-country, I decided to make something of my own,
since I didn't want to spend $500 or so on an unknown headset.

I used an impedance adjusting transformer and a couple of plugs/jacks to
adapt the earphone to a standard stereo audio jack. I then plugged in my
in-ear audio headphones. A short flight with them (using the hand mike)
seemed to indicate that this might be viable.

I then tried to figure out how to get a mike attached so that I could use
the earphones without a hand mike. Although I'm not completely happy with
my solution, I bought a PC headset mike unit and cut off the existing
mike; attached an aircraft mike to the end and wired it up. So I wear the
headset with the one-side earpiece *over* the in-ear earbuds.

I just flew 30 hours with this setup. Findings:

- Overall, much more comfortable than my Telex Echeleon ANR headset
- I can now wear a hat when I fly
- Ear buds sometimes tend to want to fall out. I sometimes had to push
them in a bit more to re-seal for sound blocking. I might need to go from
the medium to the large seals.
- Noise reduction probably slightly less than the Telex, but not bad
- Too many cords with the PC headset, the adaptor, and the earbuds. Need
to tie-wrap.

Overall, this was a good experiment and I really liked the in-ear
approach. Before I spring for $1000 for a Bose, I'd really like to know
how the ~$500 in-ear units work. Anybody have any experiences with one of
these?

Tim