Noises get on my nerves! Some you can tune out even though you can’t turn them off. Others, like a bed bouncing up and down when the couple in the apartment above are having sex, might even make you smile for a minute before you start banging the ceiling with the butt end of a hockey stick fifteen or sixteen times. But noises that occur when you’re trying to sleep are the ones that send me over the edge. I went in search of a solution starting with Sennheiser Electronic Corporation, makers of high quality noise canceling headphones…

Dear Sennheiser Sound Silencers,

Outside noises drive me nuts — especially when I’m trying to sleep. Just outside my bedroom window is a yard and a lake. All I hear every night are frogs croaking and crickets cricketing. At hotels, I can hear kids wailing, doors slamming and people yapping in the hallway in the middle of the night. Even the darn air conditioner or heater going on and off wakes me up. Sometimes my wife talks in her sleep and that’s particularly annoying because I don’t know to whom. Earplugs don’t work for me. And I can’t drown these things out with music because after about 20-minutes the music wakes me up. I need dead quiet, like cemetery quiet, to fall and stay asleep.

I know you’re not a sleep clinic, but stick with me on this. One night, I got so desperate I was ready to stuff a wad of gum in my ears because some damn bird was letting out a mating call that to this minute is still resonating in my ear canal. Then it hit me (not the bird, an idea). I put on noise-cancellation headphones and finally found some peace and quiet.

The only problem is I can’t sleep in one position, so when I turn my head, the headphones move off my ears. Then I can hear all the critters, pain in the butt hotel guests, climate control equipment and my wife chatting to whomever she’s fantasizing about that night. Does Sennheiser have anything in development for sleep noise cancellation? That would really be music to my ears!

In need of sound advice and a good night’s sleep,
“Me”

A Sennheiser Consumer Electronics Product Manager responded with:

Thank you for your letter, which was thought provoking, entertaining and well…well put!

We have developed a series of active noise cancellation headphones for use during travel. Although it is inviting to use them to catch up on some sleep, they, as you mentioned, do not permit sleeping on one’s side.

We are in the process of developing several new technologies (we’re always working on some exciting stuff), however our current lineup represents our active noise canceling options for the time being.

I have enclosed a catalog and some recommendations (pages folded over). Some are noise canceling, some are not. The in-ear headphones are like earplugs and speakers rolled into one…a decent option if you can find a play list of music that is subtle and quiet enough for sleep.

Please stay in touch with us so that we can serve you properly when the product you need arrives.

Thanks for reaching out to us, we appreciate your time and support.

Final Thoughts: Even though Sennheiser hasn’t solved shutting out noises completely while getting some shut-eye, the sound of this response definitely impressed me. Their acknowledgment of my situation in the opening sentence not only shows they’re listening, it also indicates they understand what I’m going through.

The Product Manager responsible for this response is also very smart. Contact information is always on a company’s letterhead. On this one, he stapled his business card, showing he’s approachable. Many companies enclose product information or a catalog with replies. This manager took the time to fold over page corners with recommendations. Yet, out of 136 pages in this slick booklet, he only marked two relevant pages featuring Precision noise-isolating ear-canal phones and portable travel NoiseGard headphones with ambient noise reduction. So, I felt he was being genuinely helpful, rather than trying to sell me on everything else, which made me want to look through the rest of the catalog even more to see what other products they sold.

If you’re looking for headphones from a company that’s in tune with its customers, give a listen to Sennheiser. However, if you wake up one day with thoughts about what a product does not do, one way to be heard is to make some noise of your own and Write The Company.