After an interminable intro peppered with forced holiday references, NY Times tech guy David Pogue gets around to his actual review of the new Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones.

Fancy Bose ‘phones are popular with train commuters, who find themselves jammed into train cars with a few hundred people they’ve never met, many of whom are noisy. I bought the QuietComfort2’s not long after becoming a regular Metro-North rider, and relied quite heavily on them the first few years of commuting. These days, I guess I’ve gotten somewhat used to the noisy passengers, and leave the Bose ‘phones at home as much as I haul them with me.

Pogue took two pairs of the new Bose 15s–a pair sells for $350–and his own Panasonic cans on plane trips for his field tests. [Hey Bose PR folks–how ’bout sending TJ a review pair?] He reports they sound terrific and do a bang-up job of cancelling out noise. If his old Bose QC2s negated airplane noise by half, the QC 15s wipe out 85%.

Only problem, and it’s a big one, is very uncomfortable inner-ear pressure. Pogue says it wasn’t the normal sort of inner-ear pressure one associates with being 35,000 feet in the air.

A few seconds after turning on the headphones in flight, I suddenly felt inner-ear pressure, as if I needed to “pop” my ears. So I yawned and drank and gum-chewed and swallowed, generally exhibiting every tic ever documented. But the pressure never went away.

Headphones on: uncomfortable pressure. Headphones off: no pressure. I began to wonder if I’d gotten the name wrong, if they weren’t really the Bose QuietDiscomforts.

I shared the headphones with my travel companions; they all noticed the same effect, but only some were bothered by it.

Bose’s response: “What you’ve described is something we’ve heard occasionally from some of our customers — no more with the QC15 than our other headphones.

“The sensation of needing to ‘pop’ your ears is normally caused by a static air-pressure difference across your eardrums — something that occurs in an ascending (or descending) airplane. Headphones that reduce more low-frequency sound pressure from surrounding noise (like the QC15 or our Aviation headset) is perceptually similar to the ‘thin’ sound caused by a static air pressure difference. We believe this can explain the sensation of pressure on the ear when none is actually there.”

Interesting, although the older Bose headphones don’t give me that feeling.

Not sure if it’s the case with other railroads around the world, but Metro-North has this knack for putting forth truly awful performances on the first day back from holiday breaks.

The 8:16 rolled in at the normal time this morning at Hawthorne, and all was fine until White Plains. Once all the Plainsers boarded at 8:28, the conductor got on the mic and said we had to sit for a bit due to a broken switch, as the train awaited orders as to which track it should proceed on.

We sat for about three minutes, until he got on the P.A. again and said we were ready to roll.

But still we sat for a few more minutes before proceeding toward Gotham.

Still, the ride was painstakingly slow. An older woman who looked like a cross-dressing Nancy Pelosi, bedecked in gold baubles and a silk scarf, applied layer after layer of makeup–the end result resembling a garden fence that’s gotten about eight coats of paint over the years.

The monotony was broken up by a man on a cellphone whose tone (and volume) went from restrained to almost hysterical. He was standing in the vestibule, just behind me in the last row. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him as he argued with someone on his phone. I took off the Bose headphones for a better listen, though I could hear him fine despite Bose’s cutting-edge noise reduction technology.

Far as I could tell, the person he was arguing with is the boyfriend of his baby mama, if we can slip into contemporary ghetto parlance for a split second.

“I was with her for eight years!” he yelled. “That’s my baby’s mother! She don’t even like you!”

The man got hotter and hotter, drawing the attention of most everyone in the car.

Then it got a little more ominous.

“If I catch you, I’m gonna kill you!” he yelled.

“Tell me where you at! I stay strapped too, niggah!”

“You have to die, son, if you around my daughter!”

The man on the other end apparently insisted he was avoiding the daughter; it’s a bit saddening to imagine this domestic scene, a woman’s boyfriend making considerable effort not to interact with a girl living in the same house so as to avoid angering the girl’s father, who lives elsewhere. Leave it to Beaver, it ain’t.

“How you not around my daughter if you livin’ with Mary?” yelled our fellow passenger.

Surely some on the train wondered if they should call the cops, especially if the dude indeed had a gun, as he’d said he did. I heard the conductor behind us and heading our way. The conductor seems like a hardy fellow; pleasant but no-nonsense, and I’d noticed some Go Army branding on his badge-holding neck strap this morning. Perhaps he’d nip this little issue in the bud–throw a little Semper Fi at the strapped straphanger.

“Sir,” I could hear the conductor say. “Sir?”

Alas, he was merely requesting a ticket from a slumbering rider, and walked on by the angry cellphone guy, who had seemed to quiet up a bit.

The man on the other end of the line had either launched a seriously foreboding counterattack, or said the magic words to pacifiy our fellow rider.

“Aiight, aiight,” cooed our friend. “You won’t see me, you won’t see me.”

He and his opponent then seemed to join forces against another man who was not lucky enough to be in on the conversation.

“He been driving my car. He stole my car!”

“He’s a bitch! My niggah, if I catch him, I’m gonna kill him. Every time he see me, he run the other way.”

It got quiet a moment later, and I slipped the Bose headphones back into place.

When we finally pulled into Grand Central at 9:14, a full 10 minutes late, I stood up and tried to get a look at Uneasy Rider. Pardon the racial profiling–I don’t think it was the pasty white 20-something kid in slacks or the doughy middle-aged man in a suit in the vestibule spewing the ghetto-speak–but I think I found the man: bi-racial, perhaps black and Hispanic, corn rows under a do-rag, long black t-shirt, baggy jeans hanging below the ass, a surprisingly preppy black and white checked knapsack over his shoulder.

We got off the train, where three of New York’s finest were walking up the platform, obviously looking for someone. Uneasy Rider put his head down and shuffled along, hit the concourse, and hung a left for the subways.

Back to freakin’ work.
 

We knew something was up just after we left White Plains at 8:28 this morning, the train positively crawling along as it quixotically (Editor’s Note: First time “quixotically” has ever appeared on Trainjotting) crawled toward the city.

We limped through Hartsdale and made our way toward its posher cousin Scarsdale, going about as fast as a septuagenarian on a bicycle. (Nope, not the first time “septuagenarian” has appeared in Trainjotting.)

At around 8:40, we got the first announcement, which was very faint and difficult to hear. I’m pretty sure the man said:

“Some broken tracks down in the Scarsdale area are causing a bottleneck.”

Things didn’t get much better for several minutes, and a second announcement came on about five minutes later. It featured a woman’s voice and you truly could not make out a word she was saying (yes, I’d taken off my sweet Bose headphones, putting Bob Marley’s “The Great” compilation on ice for the moment).

At 8:46, near the southern tip of Scarsdale and almost 20 minutes after we left White Plains, we finally got cooking, and pulled into Grand Central at 9:13. That’s nine minutes late–which happens just 1.9% of the time in the A.M., according to Metro-North mouthpiece Mileposts.

A special morning indeed.

It’s been almost two months since my iPod Classic died and was replaced by the leaner, sleeker Nano, so I thought it was about time to offer up the official Trainjotting Nano review.

Two notes before we start.

1. A hearty shout-out to the clunky old Aiwa TX516 cassette Walkman–yes, you read correctly–for its positively Fernando Tatis-ian knack for stepping in when the flashier players were out of commission.

2. On the rare occasions that I’ve posted something technology-related, I’ve been bombarded (OK, flurried) with emails pointing out something I’m doing wrong that the rest of the country seems to understand perfectly well. This is good. I’d like to think my ignorance helps others.

OK, on to the review.

My Nano, which I bought for $149, is absolutely tiny. Remember how tiny you thought the iPod Classic (then just the iPod) was when you got it? This thing makes the Classic look like a cigar box. It looked bigger on the iPod Website; when I opened up the packaging, I initially thought the box was empty. As you see in the picture, it could barely take a Triscuit in a street fight.

At times it’s too small. It’s very difficult to rest it on your lap on a moving train without the thing sliding to the floor. It could conceivably even slip in the crack at the base of your seat. I’ve kept my eyes open for a rubbery protective case, and finally found one today–outdoor vendor on East 28th, packaging cloaked in grime, armband I’ll never use (Like I’m really gonna go jogging…or is it called yogging?), for a whole $7.

Interface-wise, the commands are upside down, compared to the Classic. As in, your earphones plug into the bottom, not the top, like the Classic. You’ll stare at your songs upside down for a good month before you get used to it.

Speaking of the iconic iPod earbuds, they’ve officially scrapped the fuzzy earmuff things that never stayed on anyway. And I think the sound is substantially better–and certainly louder–on the new ‘phones. When I plug in the standard-issue phones after listening on the expensive Bose cans, it’s louder on the earbuds, which absolutely wasn’t the case with the Classic buds.

Regarding the interface, the screen is crystal clear, with an attractive white backdrop, and the font is pleasing to the eye–your lineup of songs looks much more attractive than it did on the Classic. You can add album art too, if you’re a 13-year old girl.  

My biggest gripe is the song capacity. I get my RAMs and ROMs mixed up a lot, but I think my Classic was 20 Gig–it had about 2500 songs on it, including the Doors’ “The End” and “When the Music’s Over,” which should both probably count as two songs, and plenty of room left over for more.

Not the case with my 8 Gig Nano, which transferred about 2100 of my 2500 songs before announcing it was full. Sure, the thing plays video, but unless I’m doing something gravely wrong, there’s little room for the massive video files. I downloaded an episode of The Wire for $2, and it looked great–but I had to delete everything else on the Nano just to fit one episode on the hard drive.

The Nano is a gorgeous little contraption that would not be laughed at in a time capsule opened 50 or a hundred years down the road. But the limit of just over 2,000 songs feels very restrictive, at least to me.

Our little sister was in Westchester over the weekend, en route to taking the girls i on a little vacation in the Irish Catskills. Kat and Brian were fresh off the Amtrak car train from Florida (near Orlando) to Virginia (near DC).

They’d booked the auto train several months ago, some prescient thinking with the price of gas through the roof. The cost ran about $900 for the four of them and, of course, the fully-packed minivan.

Kat and Bri said mostly favorable things about the trip, which took off at 4 p.m. and pulled into its destination in Virginia around 9:30 the next morning. They’d scored four seats in the back row, which meant the girls could sleep on the smallish floor space between the row and the wall (they’re 6 and 3). The downside of that spot was hearing the car doors open every few minutes more or less until 2 in the morning.

It’s worth noting that bro-in-law Brian is like 6′ 8″, with a bit of the Restless Legs Syndrome to boot. He said, if you can sleep in a Lazy Boy, you can sleep in one of the car train seats–they recline a bit, and there’s a footrest for everyone under 6′ 8″.

Also on the plus side of the ledger, every row had an outlet, and Kat and Brian gave the service very high marks–Amtrak staffers who were constantly looking to make your trip better (particularly after you’d greased the bartender’s palm to score some free snacks for the girls).

Kat and Brian said your car train trip would be basically a joy or a debacle based on the people seated around you–remember, you’re on a train with strangers for over 17 hours. It’s mostly old folk, who tend to behave themselves, while some kiddies pushed fellow riders’ buttons, so to speak, with noisy video games.

There were several dinner seatings in a dining car (Shannon spoke highly of the Choo Choo Chewies chicken fingers, Brian not so much on the veggie lasagna), a movie in the lounge (”Mad Money”, if you’re scoring at home), and bathrooms that rated higher than their airplane counterparts.

Keys to keep in mind on the car train–bring earplugs (or Bose headphones, for that matter), pillows, blankets and socks (apparently people from Florida don’t always wear them), and sign up for AAA for a major discount–like kids are free or something like that.

Happy trails.

Well, it appears the iPod is officially dead, eternally stuck on “Shuffle Songs” without actually shuffling songs.

So I dusted off the old–as in very old–cassette Walkman, technically an Aiwa TX516, with “SUPER BASS” for those moments when the bass level that has carefully been determined by the album’s artist, producer, engineer and label exec is deemed to be insufficient by your well-trained aural receptors.

I fetched an old cassette–a Hornby-esque mix tape, no less, from my days of courting The Missus–and noisily slid it in as the 8:16 pulled out of Hummerville. A youth across the aisle, maybe 21, stared at the strange, clunky contraption in my hand, wondering if perhaps it was an 8-track player he’d heard referred to by Fez on That ’70s Show.

I popped my pricey Bose headphones into the Aiwa TX516 and it was the proverbial pearls before swine–a Mercedes hood ornament hastily affixed to a ‘75 Dodge Dart the color of a new penny.

The mix tape started off, fittingly, with “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” and we were on our way.

Fearful as I was at the loss of my iPod, I actually had a nice ride in with the Aiwa TX516. You’re much more likely to sit through a borderline song (of course, there are no borderline songs on the mix I made for the Missus) when it requires fast forwarding, as opposed to a simple flick of the finger on the iPod, and the volume level actually is more consistent on the Aiwa, compared to an iPod in Shuffle mode.

And that SUPER BASS, well, let’s just say “White Lines” never sounded so funky.

As a preferred Bose customer who wallows in the blissful audio cocoon of his Bose QuietComfort 3 headphones each day, I received a postcard informing me of Bose’s latest development in commuter-friendly electronics: The Bose QuietComfort 3 Bluetooth communications kit. The kit “connects wirelessly to your Bluetooth phone,” says Bose, “plugs into your portable audio device…and [italics theirs] switches seamlessly between the two.”

Essentially, the kit frees up hands for reading the newspaper, gesticulating wildly to illustrate a point while on the phone, or enjoying a tasty adult beverage while dealing with the morning commute.

Bose talks about creating a “virtual office in airport lounges…on commuter trains and buses…just about anywhere.” A “noise-limiting mike allows others to hear your voice more clearly even when you’re calling from a noisy environment.”

The Bose/Bluetooth kit can be tried out at the Bose stores in Soho and Columbus Circle before its release date in late March. Its suggested retail is $200.

I’d call for a review unit, but I made a pact with myself a few years back to never, ever, ever be the guy with the Bluetooth thing affixed to his hear. Nothing personal, it’s just my own pet peeve. I don’t care how widespread the technology gets…I’ll wait till you can just embed the damn phone right into my eardrum.

I knew this was going to happen.

Fifteen months after leaving the city and settling up there in Hummerville, I actually know a few people. Neighbors. Little G’s friends’ parents that turned up at his birthday party last week. That sort of thing.

One of the things I’ve actually liked about commuting is that I don’t know a soul on the train: No one to pretend I don’t see on the platform in the morning, no one to make small talk with or, egad!, share a seat with as we schlep to or from the city. I just want to be alone with the expensive Bose headphones, Crackberry, NY Times.

But twice this week, I’ve been called out by these new acquaintances on board. They’re seemingly terrific guys — smart, interesting, even urbane. But I’d rather just stay in my Syd Barrett-esque cocoon when I’m on the train. It’s how I cope.

And as the Missus and I creep closer towards being Pillars of Our Community in the coming years, it’s only going to get worse.  Little G’s school mates! His soccer pals! The Missus volunteering for the bake sale! (OK, that may never happen) .

Consider me outed.

I knew it would happen eventually.

After one year and two weeks of regular train riding, a perfect storm of factors fell into place on the 8:43 this morning and I fell asleep for the first time on my commute, drifting off somewhere around 125th and waking up just before we docked in Grand Central.

I’m not against sleeping on the train; in fact, I think it’s a great way to pass the time and catch up on sleep on those days when Little G thinks 5:55 a.m. is the perfect time to get up and re-enact the tractor-tipping scene from Cars with Matchbox cars. But for whatever reason, mostly centering around my general state of low-level anxiety in crowded spaces, I’d been unable to do so thus far.

But everything came together today. It being the 8:43, it wasn’t very quiet. No one on my car yapped into their phone. The train was way overheated, those Sox games have been ending around midnight, and those Bose ‘phones did their noise-cancelling trick. Next thing I knew, I was out.

Let’s hope it’s not another 54 weeks before I sleep on Metro-North again.