There are days when all you want is to sit in "peace and quiet", that is... to play at your computer 😊 Sure, you could just eat a Snickers and stop acting the diva, but how many sweets can you eat?
But conditions don't always allow for peaceful gaming. Your own room or study in a detached house is a luxury, but even there you can't escape the Saturday Turbo 3000 vacuum cleaner, which your other half decides to switch on just when you want to play in peace and quiet.
It's a completely different story in Polish prefab tower blocks. Anyone who has sat by a cast-iron radiator has overheard more than one neighbourly conversation... And on a Sunday afternoon you know exactly who's having pork cutlets for lunch, thanks to the sounds of the meat tenderiser travelling so eagerly. Not to mention the noise of the old lift.
Find your quiet with headphones.
And amid all this din, you just want to play or listen to music in peace... That's when headphones come to the rescue. The general rule is simple: the bigger the ear cushions your ears "sink" into and the thicker the material they're made of, the better. Better for sound isolation, of course, because there's another side to this design: sweaty ears. But we'll come to that. For now, let's focus on the ear cushions. Their design and how well they fit the shape of your ears is a very individual matter. What sits perfectly for one person may (but needn't, this is pure hypothesis) cause discomfort for another. Setting subjective impressions aside, though, let's focus on the eco-leather.
First, eco-leather.
Eco-leather is the most popular material for ear cushions. It really does isolate outside sound effectively. Its effectiveness of course also depends on the size of the cushions. The best effect comes from thick, large cushions: when they fully "wrap" the ear, outside noise is damped even more effectively. Just remember one thing: eco-leather not only isolates sound, it also restricts air circulation. The larger the cushions, the thicker the material and the better the isolation, the faster your ears tire and heat up. So it's a trade-off.
The optimal mix.
The ear cushions in the Volcano Prometheus headphones are a great solution. They use a mix of materials: eco-leather and fabric. The fabric is only on the outer part of the cushions, in direct contact with your ear. The rest of the cushion uses eco-leather that isolates ambient sound. This is probably the best way to cut yourself off from the outside world and play in peace and quiet.
