Honestly, I think the new Bose headphones bring QC-2 to shame!
I have owned both the QC 2 and QC-3 headphones for a couple of years, and their predecessors before it. My home is in a rural area that over time become increasingly noisy with car traffic, have chain saws, weed whack, aviation, boats, etc., have been a big fan of noise-canceling headphones, which for me gives respite from all this sonic assault.
When I read the specs of the QC-15, I thought, if this is an improvement compared with the QC-2, I have to try them. This is despite the feeling embarrassed to blow another $ 300 for what I feared would be a trivial difference in quality.
I need not have worried. When I turned on the QC-15, it was so close to the world. The strong roaring sound emitted by the air filter running 15 feet away, almost inaudible, the low rumble of distant boat, plane and car disappeared. The background noise generated by the QC-15 is significantly quieter than the QC-2, and noise reduction as Bose advertises covers much more of the sound field. My QC-2 headset is not nearly so good job to stop the white noise from the air filter as QC-15, for example.
Regarding sound quality, the QC-15, to my ear, better response in the bass range, 25 to 35 Hz, and Les resonance in the 80-150 Hz. The base is generally harder, too. If you are accustomed to mild boominess of QC-2, as I was, it may take you a bit of listening to appreciate the difference. In the higher frequency ranges appears to QC-15 compared with the QC-2. My 64 years old ears cut arount 8 kHz, so I will defer to the judgments of younger listeners in this area.
All-in-all, I am very pleased with the improvements, which manifests itself in this new version of the Bose headphones and feel that even at $ 300, they are well worth it.
The only negative criticism I can do so far is that the headphones produce a fairly loud click when you insert them into the QC-2. This is not a big deal, I just make sure to throw the switch on before turning phones on my head.
By the way, many users of the Bose (and other) noise canceling headphones complain, sometimes bitterly, about his feeling of "ear pressure" when the noise cancelletion is enabled. This is an illusion that occurs due to actual pressure on the offset UN eardrums (as when climbing or down in an airplane) has the effect of reducing the low frequency response eardrums. This loss of low frequency sensitivity is read by the brain as the pressure in the case of elevation, it is actually. Noise-canceling headphones dramatically reduce the surrounding low-frequency sounds, many of which we register unconsciously. The brain interprets this as pressure on the eardrum, but it's actually not the case. The feeling of pressure produced by the noise reduction is actually an indication of how very, very low-frequency background noise we tolerate under normal circumstances. Research shows that such low frequency sounds can actually be a source of low-grade anxiety. Therefore you will find that these headphones off of your nagging anxiety along with the background rumble generated by the rampant burning of fossil fuels, which are all around us.
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