No boom? No problem

SuperBeam headphones by Andrea Electronics Corp.
$89 at Amazon.com

A good set of headphones should deliver mellow music to your ears, while staying out of your way. These days, a lot of ‘phones fail that test, because so many of them feature a microphone boom that hangs in front of the user’s mouth. Such headphones are popular with home computer users who use Internet phone calling services like Skype. But they’d be even more popular if somebody could get that annoying boom out of our faces.

And somebody has. Andrea Electronics, makers of noise-cancelling headphones for helicopter and fighter pilots, now offers a headphone with a boomless mic. The SuperBeam features a pair of barely-visible plastic extensions that jut out from both earpieces. These are sophisticated microphones that capture the user’s voice without getting in his way.

Overall sound quality was quite respectable. The SuperBeam headphones did a good job with a Metropolitan Opera broadcast; Verdi’s Aida came across with a rich, satisfying sound. And a recording of my voice made with the boomless microphones made me sound even better than usual. My one complaint is the size of the ‘phones, which barely fit my rather bulbous head. Still, these boomless headphones are a welcome audio innovation.