iPods deserve quality headphones, and iPod owners like nice gifts. The Apple earbuds that come with new iPods are actually pretty good so far as earbuds go. But they're still earbuds. Serious music lovers need something a little with a little more oomph to get the most out of their portable music collection.

An iPod in your pocket can turn your whole day around, particularly if you commute to work or school via public transportation or take planes or trains regularly. I know that being able to hear just the right song on a moment's notice has helped me get to work on several mornings when the New York City subway system threatened to put me in a permanent bad mood before 8 a.m. Escaping the realities of slow, crowded trains through a song is priceless.

Macally's new Noise Reduction Headphones are traditional "over the ear" headphones that combine good sound with noise cancellation circuitry that makes your escape into music all the more complete. The "Pod Pro" heapdhones also feature a handy folding headphone design that's color coordinated to match your iPod. And they're priced to sell.

The $60-ish Pod Pros have a frequency response of 18-21,000 Hz with active noise cancellation of up to 16dB from 25-16,000 Hz. In other words, plug them into your iPod (or any other audio source), and they'll provide stereo sound that's on par with other headphones in this price range. The extra kick comes when you install two "AAA" batteries and flip the switch located on the side of the left earpiece. Doing so activates the noise reduction circuits, which electronically filter out background noise in all but the lower- and upper-most reaches of the audio spectrum.

These babies really work. Turning on noise reduction effectively seals the outside world out and your music in, which means you can hear more of your tunes at effectively lower volumes. The noise reduction is most effective against semi-constant background noise like the hum of a plane's engines in the cabin or the din of voices in a cafe. I use the Pod Pros during my commute to/from work and they're a great defense against the noise of city streets. My girlfriend took them on a 14 hour plane ride to South Korea and said they were fantastic. The leather ear cushions and flexible headband are comfortable, the included remote volume control and airplane jack adapter are handy, and the lightweight (180g) phones fold for easy storage in the included carrying case. What's also nice is that the connecting cable detaches entirely from the headphones, so if cord breaks you don't have to trash the headphones, but rather just get another cord.

Even better, the Macally's don't leak sound to the outside world like earbuds do. So you can enjoy Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses in peace and quiet while your neighbors can enjoy whatever they're doing without having to hear it. Ride the 4 train from Brooklyn to East Harlem just once while trying to read a book and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

The headphones provide faithful reproduction with good solid lows and clear highs (remember, these are $60 consumer headphones, not $350 Sennheisers). The noise reduction doesn't quite put you in a sonic vacuum -- which is good, beacuse you can use them on the street and still hear that city bus that's about to run you over -- but it effectively cuts out most background noise. The net result is really nice, and quite surprising the first time you turn them off and return to sonic reality.

One thing to note is that the noise cancellation circuits don't work on sounds at the lowest end of the audio spectrum. So very low, "rumbling" type noises will make it through the cancellation process, resulting in low-level outside noises coming through as somewhat jarring interruptions in your music. This didn't happen to me much outside of when I was riding on the subway, as the trains do tend to rumble over the tracks. This happens because the noise cancellation stops at 25 Hz while the headphones themselves reproduce sounds down to 18Hz. Macally confirmed that this will happen especially during train and car rides and that adjusting the level of noise reduction -- or turning it off entirely -- is the best solution. So I use the noise reduction until I get on the subway, and then turn it off. Kind of a drag, to be sure, but c'est la vie in the big city.

The Macally Pod Pro headphones are available direct from Macally for $69 plus shipping, or can be had a bit cheaper from other online retailers.