Sony headphones, ambient music. A superb yet embarrassing combo

I have struggled through life thus far using cheap headphones. Since my first Sony Walkman back in the primitive year of 1980, my audio experience has been somewhat lacking. At the start, I was 8 years old and was listening to tapes – sometimes tapes of songs recorded from the radio – so it was no big deal. A decade later and I graduated to a Disc-man. This was a better sound but when walking around the earlier models skipped so much, you ended up carrying the player like a bowl of soup terrified of spillage. Then iPhones and in-ear headphones arrived and they were great right up until about a month ago with the Sony wh-1000xm3. I then discovered what my earholes had been missing out on.

I had been looking into noise cancelling headphones for quite a while as my usual £20 pairs don’t cut the sound of all my annoying fellow humans. Humans such as the type of massive fuckwit who thinks it is ok to play video or music on their phone at a loud volume in a coffee shop. I love writing in coffee shops or pubs and am fully aware that some people go there to talk and drink coffee. Which is fine I suppose. I just need to eliminate their banal natter as it is distracting. Most co-working spaces seem to be full of people who want to network and talk loudly about startups using language that they inexplicably seem to think is ‘innovative’ and ‘dynamic’.

So I did a lot of research. There were a lot of reviews recommending a variety of headsets but then the internet did something that happens so rarely – it agreed on something. The Sony wh-1000xm3 noise cancelling headphones were supposed to be great.

I then met a mate of mine who just happened to be wearing a pair when he walked into the pub and let me have a go. I bought some the next day and I am not lying, my daily word count has shot up. At this rate, they will pay for themselves in no time. In much the same way that all my awesome gadgets are supposed to.

The only downside is that I have long been a fan of writing with ambient sounds and white noise. Heavy rain or distant surf or my innards after a vindaloo. More recently I have been into either a combo, such as the Blade Runner synths mixed with rain (awesome when writing scifi noir) or stuff like ‘space ambient mix’. There are loads of them on YouTube and with the superb sound, noise cancelling and focus-inducing, vaguely trippy space-music, I get too into what I am doing. An hour can go by and I have forgotten where I am and end up talking to myself or grinning at a particularly brilliant section. I only snap out of it when I run out of whatever bucket of coffee I happen to be drinking or someone bafflingly chooses to sit next to the strange muttering maniac I become.

So if you are one of those annoying fuckers who spend an entire afternoon in the corner of a coffee shop but is easily distracted, I can’t recommend the Sony wh-1000xm3 enough. Catchy name too. If like me, you get too into your own imagination and mumble dialogue constantly to yourself, then you will have the added bonus of hardly anyone wanting to sit next to you. It really is money well spent.

I would also like to add that I have not been paid or asked to endorse this product. Although if anyone from Sony happens to read this and wants to send me cash, I am totally up for it. Thanks in advance.

Here is a random ambient clip to get you started: