That's not a typo in the thread title.

I've had a pair of Bose QC2 phones for a couple of years and love them. I bought them as a treat to replace my Bose QC1s, which I gave to my wife. She started wearing them around the house and managed to damage the cord so that one phone stopped working. I called Bose and was told they couldn't be repaired, but I could trade up to a set of QC2s for $100. Good deal, so I sent the old phones in and waited for my new phones to arrive.

They came today. They're silver in color, unlike my older QC2s which are gold. I tried them out and found two pleasant surprises. First, they seem to cancel more noise -- I was only testing them in my home office where I have a computer with a noisy fan, but the newer QC2s seemed to do a slightly better job; there was a stronger "cone of silence" feel when they kicked in (if you have good noise cancelers, you know what I mean). However, the second pleasant surprise came when I plugged in my iPod. I've always thought my QC2s sounded good. However, these new silver QC2s made my older pair sound harsh and muddy. The definition was incredible, really a very noticeable difference -- instead of that usual, "everything's taking place in the middle of my head" sensation I get with most phones, I heard a well-defined sound field, with voices and instruments cleanly placed in space and easily distinguishable from each other.

I vaguely remember seeing something about Bose improving the QC2 around the time they introduced the QC3. This, however, is a pretty significant improvement, at least to me. My wife gets my old QC2s (she's fine with that -- she doesn't listen to music when we fly, she just likes the noise reduction, and she doesn't fly 1/10th as much as I do).

If you've passed on QC2s previously because you weren't impressed with the audio quality, you should give them another listen.