I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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There is a bit of a gadget drought going on right now. iPhone, BB8800, NAND Mac’s are still a way off.
But today Julien from Phitek dropped off the new in ear, noise cancelling Black Box earphones. I have been looking forward to these for a while.
I have to gush. These are very, very cool! Great packaging and a real rugged feel. 10/10.
In noise cancelling mode they are spooky. Takes external sound right down. Great for the office.
Playing music is great. Big sound with good bass coming through. The battery pack is well down the cord with a clip that contains volume and on/off. My ones came with a hard case, carry case, plane adapter, variety of ear buds, battery, and leash.
They are only $NZ179 at http://www.blackboxonline.com. I paid twice that for some Shure’s last year. Too cheap.
Just awesome to see a New Zealand company building world class hardware. Mark - quick, change the price from NZ to US or GBP. They are worth it.
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Just tried these out, DEAD sexy, infact I just brough a pair.
My only worry with them is I’m now more likely to wander blindy into traffic…, oh well guess it’s a small price to pay for good sounds :)
Hi Rod.
I would be keen to hear (har har) your views on how these compare to the M14’s you have. I am in the market and am looking to buy locally made.
I would be looking for travel use mostly and want to know if you used the M14’s on your latest trip and how you found them on a long journey.
Cheers
Hamish
The reason I went for in ear models is that you can sleep/doze with them on. Important for the big flights.
At first I was like, woah, $180? But after I sampled yours (sorry for getting them dirty) now I want some of my own!
Fletch - anything to cancel out those buses would be great. They’re so loud.
Cool stuff from Phitek. It shows that our NZ R&D and product development can compete international in the international market. There are many algorithms used for noise cancellation today in the field of digital signal processing and their capabilities in also varies in eliminating noise. I don’t know what sort of algorithms that Phitek is developing into their products but I am very well familiar with one of those noise cancellation algorithm in use today and very popular called Independent Component Analysis (ICA). There are many different types of ICA algorithms available today including open source , but there are always new ones keep emerging and being published in the literatures where they are more robust than existing ones according to their respective authors. I wouldn’t be surprised if Phitek had developed embedded ICA algorithms into their products. I have seen many papers from the literatures of how ICA is used in noise cancellation with one example briefly described in the following abstract :
Selective Noise Cancellation Using Independent Component Analysis
The main concept behind ICA is to separate the original sources (causes, drivers, etc) into their separate components. Eg: a recorded conversation in a noisy bar can be separated into their independent component speeches, since each person’s speech that were recorded were indpedent, ie, person A’s speech was not influenced by person B’s speech nor person C, person D, etc,… After running the ICA over the mixed recorded signal conversation, then each person’s speech can now be extracted separately, ie, person A’s speech, person B’s speech, person C’s speech, etc. This capability of separating the original sources is what makes ICA the right candidate for noise cancellation. The noise signal can be separated into its own components (normal + noise) using ICA, where the noise is identified and then removed.
ICA algorithm is based on human ability to separate audio signals in a noisy environment. If you are in a noisy bar, you have the ability to hone in on someone’s conversation while blocking other conversation that originates from different direction in that bar. The human brain just work like the ICA in processing all the incoming signal to the brain, but only identified the component that it is interested to listen to and thus block (filter) out the rest.
I am including ICA into a financial application that I am developing at the moment targeting the financial market analyst to be used in finance factor modeling which is based on this what is described here: Applying Independent Component Analysis to Factor Model in Finance. Factor modeling in finance is quite a popular method used by financial analysts and fund managers of today. Traditional factor modeling in finance still use linear regression, but ICA is reported to be more robust than the traditional linear regression.
The ICA adoption has exploded in its popularity over recent years for application that ranges from:
- finance (stock & portfolio tracking)
- DNA sequencing in bioinformatics
- CDMA telecommunication devices (block out cross-talk interference)
- Communication system Surveillance (tracking al Qaida operatives worldwide communiation)
- Text Search engine
- MRI for medical imaging
- radar detection systems
- music recognition systems
- social networking analysis
- and many more…
Our own CRI do R&D for product development using ICA.
Hi,
I know a scientist at IRL, Gracefield, who’s doing some research for Phitek.
He talked to us recently about it at an event of the Wellington Audio Association
http://www.waa.org.nz/
There are 2 other New Zealanders that I am aware of, whom are subscribed to the ICA mailing list. I’ve never met them, but I see their names from time to time posting messages to the ICA mailing list. One is Dr. Dr Paul Teal from Victoria University who has published a few papers on ICA and the other one is Neil Scott from IRL, and I am not surprised at all that IRL is doing research for Phitek, because to the best of my knowledge, IRL is also doing R&D for an auckland start-up company called BrainZ which is mentioned in this article here. I believe that BrainZ is using (or perhaps developing) embedded ICA to remove certain signals that were not originated from the brain but from other sources such as the heart (heart beatings), etc… This sort of unwanted signal elimination (ie, signal or noise cancellation) allows physicians to see the brain signal itself from the monitor and make diagnosis rather than seeing signals on the monitor that had been muddied by noise signals (signals originated from other sources such as heart beat, muscle contraction as in the eye movement, etc, other than from the brain itself) from other sources. It would be very hard to make a good diagnosis from the EEG monitor, when the all that is displayed in the monitor are combinations of signals originated from the brain plus other unrelated signals (regarded as noise) coming from the heart beat, muscle contractions interfere with the intended signal of interest (brain signals). There are many publications on this medical application of ICA such as these examples .
Basically, the principle in ICA is the same whether it is application in finance, audio noise cancellation (Phitek), CDMA application , voice and speech separation,etc,… The original sources had to be identified and the interesting component are to be retained, while eliminating the unwanted source components.
I got involved in a project with a local online retailer last year (2006) and I proposed developing ICA for their search engine based on this publication :
I-SG : Interactive Search Grouping - Search result grouping using Independent Component Analysis, but actually they decided to buy an off-the shelf product.
ICA is definitely a hot topic today in terms of state-of-the-art technology development, and I am keeping an eye on it, just for implementation in any project that I am involved in.
I’d be interested in the comparison with the M14’s too (which I have - they ROCK).
I agree on the price thing. People over here (the US) can’t beleive they are, what, $199 US or so? especially as they sound, cancel and look way better than the bose ones. Underpricing them would, I think, hurt the product. Pity it’s hard these days - with the interweb thing - to do different prices in different countries. $350 in NZ is a good price - but $300US in the US would work, too.
BTW, “loan” them to Rowan Simpson next time you see him - he was after a pair ;-) And being he works for Xero and all that….
Hi Emanuele,
Your organization might be interested in this commercial product from BMat, Barcelona , Spain, for music recommendation engine. Bmat’s product do include ICA in their music search engine products and they have a few.
Here is a brief description from their website on one of their audio products b-MyEar:
b-MyEar recognizes songs within 20 seconds, is resistant to signal alterations such as broadcast mastering effects or noisy channel degradation, and performs accurately in noisy environments such as bars or concert venues.
The capability described above is ICA.
As I have mentioned in my previous post that I was involved in a project with an online local retailer, where they were looking to implement internet technology that would help improve the sales. Since they also sells music CDs online, they wanted to see how Amazon does its automated product recommendation. In the music recommendation part , I recommended to them that if they want an off-the-shelf commercial product then BMat’s music recommendation search engine is the best out there. The search engine works directly on the song’s binary file content itself rather than the annotated text for the song label. The search engine recognizes the type of songs (genre) that the user listens to frequently, and when new artists or new songs become available, it automatically recommends to the user about the new items that are similar to the user’s taste. This way, it helps to upsell or cross-sell new music CDs to users. The main advantage of this type of music content search is that it can retrieve songs with similar tunes which is closer to how human recognizes songs with similar audio content, eg, if you give the search engine a song, say Michael Jackson, thriller to search for , the engine retrieves similar types of songs (same beat, etc), however it avoids retrieving any Mozart classical music, because they are definitely very dissimilar . I also made proposal to this retailer, that if they wanted their own custom developed music recommendation engine, then I can definitely develop the core algorithm of the engine and handed it to their team of developers to be integrated with their web application.
Amazon, music recommendation (same as its books) are still based on user-rating feedback rather than the content of the songs. I think that it won’t be too long before Amazon jump to implement a music content recommendation engine similar to Bmat’s product at some stage.
If I was to develop a music recommendation engine for this retailer, I would have definitely followed the methods appeared in publications made by scientists who involved in developing Bmat’s products, and their papers are publicly available in the literatures. Bmat’s products originated from research work at the Music Technology Group and all their publication are listed here:
Rod, sorry for posting personal message to Emanuele in your blog-site.
Thanks Nic. I’m happy to buy my own. I tried again tonight and still no joy. They look great and I’d love to get my hands on a pair. They really need to sort out their website. Has anybody else had any luck trying to make a purchase?
Would be more than willing to buy a pair to give them a go against my Shures over here in the UK and become a WOMA for you…
Can’t seem to buy online yet though, and will they ship to the UK?
Rowan/Joe - seems to work in IE6 but I get the same problems as you in Firefox & Safari.
I just managed to buy using IE7, but found that some of the Flash didn’t work first time off, though it seemed to recover after I’d navigated to other parts of the site then came back.
Hope they’re good. I’m buying based on your self proclaimed role as a gadgetphile, Rod.
By the way, congratulations on the Xero IPO. As one of your new shareholders I’m kinda glad it didn’t get past the $15m mark and diluting my shares.
I’m looking forward to “our” future!
Hi I work at Blackbox and I was reading your comments about the website. We fixed the payment page to make it easier to navigate, hope it makes things easier.
The last payment page for credit card details opens in a new window (we didn’t have the choice for that, it’s the only option offered by our payment system provider)so some people may experience some problem if they have a pop up blocker.
Any trouble you can still contact me at info@blackboxonline.com
Hi Christelle, if you are using DPS for credit card payments and using there hosted version, open the page in an iFrame
I ordered some of these from the blackbox Website towards the end of last week. It did take some fiddling to actually make the payment - I think I ended up having to use some flavour of Internet Explorer to get the credit card payment site to load, which isn’t really convenient given that I’m a Mac user.
Anyway, the C14 earphones/ear buds/whatever arrived yesterday and initial listening in the office is good. The noice cancellation takes away the aircon/desk fan white noise and makes loud phone conversations and other noises seem distant. You get some good noise reduction due to the in-ear design, but the noise cancellation adds significantly more filtering. All this means that you can listen at a reduced volume level, which can only be a good thing.
Two minor quibbles. Firstly, the earphones themselves are slightly bulky, but not overly so. Maybe experimenting with the other rubber tips will help them fit more snugly. Secondly, I’d prefer a flanged foam/rubber tip rather than the ‘dome-shaped’ rubber tips (as used on some of the Sony in-ear phones). I don’t find that the rubber domes fit too well, I believe a flanged tip would fit better and also provide additional noise insulation. This style of tip is used in the Etymotic range.
Just got the C14s, very sexy - fantastic packaging, pouch perfect for dropping into the lappie bag - no intertwining cable annoyances, or wide headphones to try to accomodate. Noise Cancellation excellent and of course beating my (good value) Philips SHN5500 NR headphones - now just have to find a flight to take to trial them…
PS. No problems on the blackboxonline website with IE6/Win…
I recently purchased the C14 earphones over the Net based mainly on a glowing article in the March 2007 edition of PC Magazine. The writer spoke very highly of this noise cancelling ear phone product stating that low frequency background noises (like the mechanical whir of a PC or air-con unit, or even a bus or train) were rendered totally inaudible. My own experience however shows this not to be the case. In fact I have been unable to find any evidence of low frequency noise cancellation properties whatsoever. When plugged into my FM stereo system it causes the sound to degrade and actually seems to interfere with the signal somehow. Even worse, I have found that my Tinnitus (due to high frequency hearing loss suffered many years ago) becomes much worse to the point where I am fearful of experimenting any further with this product(which is curently residing in my “Wheely Bin”). All this is most disappointing as phones are well packaged and look great. Pity they don’t work. It is of course possible that my particular phones are defective.reCAPTCHA WP Error:incorrect-captcha-sol
Forced to retire a faithful set of Sony buds that were remarkably effective at passively blocking ambient noise (used to stuff ‘em in the ears without connecting to a source on long flights to sleep) and was all set to go buy another pair before reading Rod’s post and the various responses. Looked at Sennheisers in the UK a couple of years ago - they simply don’t work very well, Bose only offer “cans”. These however perform brillantly, although I needed to experiment with different inserts to get a good seal - this is crucial. Customer service is awesome - just call or e-mail and they’ll send you spare inserts in the size you need for free. You gotta love the fact that there is a Kiwi company taking on the world with a product this good. I’m with Rod - they should up the price but preferably not before I buy another set for my wife :-)
Hi,
I bought some of these today after reading the good reviews. I’ve found the sound quality to be good but the noise leak is APPALLING. Everyone around me can hear what I’m listening to as soon as I turn on the noise-cancelling feature … even at low volumes.
With the noise-cancelling feature turned off they sound bad too which isn’t too good.
Have you experienced this?
- Chris
I’ve recently purchased the Cowon D2 media player and after using the supplied earbuds, appalling as they were, I began my hunt for a worthy set of earbuds to compliment the amazing audio capabilities of the Cowon D2.
After reading Rod’s comments I popped into Absolute Audio & Visual in Wellington and picked up a pair of Blackbox C14’s.
…. WOW!
I am completely gob-smacked at the sound quality the d2 and the c14 combination provide. I have never heard anything on any portable media device/earbud combination that comes close to matching it. Lows, Mids and Highs are re-produced beautifully even to my non-audiophilic audio perception! The Cowon D2 contributed much to this in it’s ability to fully customize audio output.
Noise cancellation works a treat blocking out most office clamour. Using these earbuds on the D2 only requires minimal volume levels to sink into a blissfully pure sound stage with little to no external noise interference!
Something to note however; the C14 earbuds pickup any inconsistencies in badly encoded sound files as should be the case with any hiqh quality earbud/phones.
Despite the C14’s being larger than your traditional earbuds, I find them comfortable and secure. There are replacement silicon earbud covers in the pack to customize fitment.
Wonder if I can use these as an excuse not to do the lawns when the wife starts bleeting? ;)
I highly recommend the Blackbox C14 earbuds to anyone not satisfied with the factory provided buds most people put up with when buying a new media device. The Blackbox C14’s will show the true potential of the device it is plugged into! :)
Well after reading Ron’s review and the one over on Geekzone I decided to give the C14 earphones a try as I have a big trip coming up.
All I can say is they are excellent. The difference just in the office is quite amazing, and like Ron the in the ear design can be quite handy for a sleep on a long plane journey.
I have owned a pair of M14’s for about a year now. Initially when i was looking for a pair of headphones i had looked at the Bose equivalent but as everyone knows the price can be a tad off putting.
If you are a big fan of quality music and enjoyment is key then i suggest you invest in a pair of the M14’s. To say they are awesome is an understatement (especially with noise cancellation on).