Ultra-cheap Studio Headphones

aka the Portable Zen Place.

Made by combining a pair of headphones and a pair of ear defenders to make outside-world-blocking headphones, in anticipation of a long train journey in which I'd rather hear my music than everyone else on the train talking loudly into their mobiles. The aforementioned train journey took three and a half hours, and my carriage was populated by screaming babies, teenagers, the aforementioned phone users and an obnoxious woman eating crisps with her mouth open while staring at me; these were an absolute sanity-saver. Hence "portable zen place". "Studio headphones" is because I don't know what they call those headphones they use in sound studios, but I'd guess they're sound blocking.

(This step probably makes me sound like a raging sociopath; I'm really not, many of my best friends are humans.)

Step 1: Materials required

- Uber-cheap ear defenders: about £3.50 ($7)
- Uber-uber-cheap headphones: about £2.50 ($5)
- Electrical tape: you should own already, and I can't see it costing more than £1.00

I am lucky to live 30 seconds walk from a fantastic hardware shop that's kind of like Aladdin's Cave for DIYers, but you should be able to find these in any self-respecting hardware shop or (probably) online.

Comments

[Dr. Pepper]

Ehh, I prefer my Beats Pro.

[PKM]

Allow me to direct your attention to the first two words of the title. Beats pro- £240 (and half of that is probably for the Dr. Dre endorsement). My headphones- £6. While these won't replace a pair of pro-grade phones, they are a nice quick hack and I'm pretty sure they outperform all other headphones I've tried in a similar price range :)

[Dr. Pepper]

I wasn't insulting your headphones. I love this hack. I love all of your instructables.
I just love my headphones.

[grimdaddy]

I have been doing something similar for quite sometime now.  I put on a set of good ear buds and place a pair of "sound defenders" over them while I mow my lawn.  Now if i could figure out how to make my cell phone chime through on the same set up.

[tech53]

I like your idea a lot but someone should mention that if you want to use them for studio use you should check the frequency response of the headphones you are buying. You can get a pair of technics off of Ebay for 30 dollars or less. I once made the mistake of not knowing that back in my beginning days and found out a year later that everything I'd recorded had garbage on the tracks because I couldn't hear the extremely low or high end...still though, it's a great way to turn a 15 to 30 buck pair of headphones into 300 to 500 dollar behringers.

[bustedit]

i love Nice Weather for Ducks; got turned onto lemon jelly in june u like the Presets? daedulus?

[T-K]

woohoo! presets! this is an awesome idea. i have a pair of nice skullcandies i got yesterday, and i dont want to risk losing them, so i cn wear these on the way to school and back.

[abadfart]

i did this so i could hear my mp3 player over the jackhammer but i put in 3 layers of foam and i used ear buds

[trooperrick]

I was having trouble soldering headphone wire too until I came across this site which greatly helped.

[Yerboogieman]

i would add some heavy duty covering for those wires, they seem so bear and small

[PKM]

True- I wrapped the plug end in LX tape because the strain relief on the cheap-ass headphone wire was pitiful, but ideally the headphone end could do with reinforcing as well.

[Yerboogieman]

yea

[zorro3355]

you copied from tim.

[PKM]

Actually I didn't, as I'd made these before I read Tim's Instructable and rather foolishly posted the Instructable before checking for duplicates. I left it up as it goes into a little more depth than Tim's Instructable (I actually disassemble the defenders, rather than just put defenders on over headphones), but while I accept that it's a pretty similar concept I take exception to accusations of plagiarism and would certainly give credit if I used a significant part of an existing Instructable in writing one of my own.

Also, there are plenty of Instructables on making flamethrowers and catapults out of stationery- maybe you should look at the originality of your own work before accusing other people of plagiarism?

[Brennn10]

I agree. You can take the same idea, but you can do something different than the original. That is what PKM did.

[zoxx]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Jackhammer-Headphones/