I OPERATED A CONCRETE SAW while talking on my SonyEricsson Xperia X10 phone and recorded some impressive audio results below. I got this phone from the manufacturer with the understanding that I would probably break it. I don't think they thought I'd run it with a concrete saw. Although the saw's 114 decibel roar dominates the audio recording (click the player below to hear), it's possible to discern what I was shouting as I used the saw to cut three inches off a piece of Tipperary limestone while helping complete stone facing on a wall. SonyEricsson builds noise-cancellation into their handsets and the result is well-engineered. I hadn't thought that the technology would work so well when using earbuds but why not? The noise-cancelling circuit tried to reduce the exceptionally loud ambient sound of cutting rock by using an active noise control (ANC) circuit. This involved using a microphone on the phone handset to generate an "antinoise" signal. When the antinoise signal is produced by the speaker driver in the headphone, destructive interference cancels out the ambient noise as heard within the enclosed volume of the headphone. I didn't help the process by keeping the phone in my back pocket while using the earbud within two feet of the concrete saw's motor. While listening to Adam Curry on the handset, noise cancellation gave me a decent audio level without having to raise the volume of Curry's Daily Source Code. After more than 12 hours of cutting, grinding and working with bog-standard SonyEricsson earbuds, I'm ready to move back to my Bluetooth earbuds since they block more environmental noise by fitting deeper into my ear.Listen on Audioboo:
Direct link to audio: http://www.insideview.ie/files/consaw.mp3
