On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 13:19:30 +0100, Peter Spikings wrote:

Hi all,

I'd like to start listening to music at work but sometimes it can get
pretty quiet and I don't want to disturb anyone else. I've looked into
it and seen that you can get headphones which attempt to cancel out
noise but they stop external sound getting in and don't seem to try and
stop their own generated sound from getting out, what I want is pretty
much the reverse, i.e. I want to avoid disturbing others around me but
want to know when someone comes up behind me and starts talking

Any suggestions?

Closed headphones.
You should look into ones at a music shop, those that are commonly used for recording
vocals are often the closed type so as to not have spill from the headphone get into
the vocal track.

Or go retro and pick up a Pioneer SE-205 or something.

Or just default to one of the many workhorses like the Pioneer SE-450, lots of DJs
used it in the 90s. I got two off ebay to monitor at my computers to block them out.
They are rather directional and at moderate levels do not leak very much at all.

-Mikkel