Office Assistance

My last post covered gadgets that enhanced my on-the-road life. What about when I'm at the home office? Don't let the title of this post confuse you; no, I don't have a secretary, and I'm not referring to the border collie who's perpetually at my feet, or the cat who regularly inhabits my tie-dye beanbag chair, either. I'm a dual-source music subscriber; to Yahoo Music Unlimited, and to Sirius Satellite Radio (whose channels, well most of them, you can also stream to your Windows- or Mac OS-powered PC via a web browser as long as you have Windows Media Player installed). So, as you can imagine, I've got music in my ears most days I'm at work.

Listening to tunes through speakers might disturb my wife elsewhere in the house (she doesn't share my affinity for jam bands), and it doesn't block out ambient noise when I need to concentrate, either. Instead, I use a set of Amphony Model 2500 5.8 GHz wireless headphones. Indicative of other wireless devices that operate in this frequency band (such as 802.11a Wi-Fi networks), the model 2500s don't have the operating range that they might if they instead ran at 2.4 GHz or 900 MHz.

Then again, they don't pick up interference from the microwave oven, garage door opener, 802.11b/g and Bluetooth networks, cordless phones and other lower-frequency-band devices, either. In contrast, the Sennheiser RS-40 900 MHz headphone set in my livingroom is notorious for injecting clicks, pops, hiss and other objectionable artifacts into the audio presentation. The Amphony headphones sound pretty darn good; I probably wouldn't use them for a critical listening test, mind you, but especially when you consider that I'm usually listening to a heavily lossy-compressed stream coming from the Internet, they nicely fit the bill.

The Model 2500s are a bit bulky, but not too bad, especially considering there's a AA battery in each earpiece. I feed the transmitter with a Toslink optical S/PDIF connection from my computer; coaxial S/PDIF and analog (with volume control) options are also offered. Another nice touch; the transmitter contains dual AA recharging wells so you'll always have a fresh set of batteries at your disposal. Not that you'll often need them; I regularly get many weeks' worth of operating life out of a single set. And perhaps best of all, I really like not being tethered to my computer as would be the case with a set of traditional corded headphones. Trust me, I'm not dancing or playing air guitar, but I do dig the wireless-enabled freedom of movement.