The airplane seat with headphones installed into the headrest

Hamburg, Germany (CNN) — As wireless headphones become increasingly omnipresent, standard-issue airline headphones with their tangled cables and multi-pronged jack plugs seem increasingly outdated.

Sure, you can now link up personal headphones with some airplane inflight entertainment systems, but will your batteries last the length of a long-haul flight, and are you willing to risk losing your expensive earbud in the seat mechanism, never to be seen again?

Enter Euphony, a new airplane seat concept from French aircraft interior designer Safran Seats, produced in collaboration with audio technology company Devialet.

Euphony does away with the need for a personal headset. Instead, speakers are installed in each individual seat’s headrest, with sound levels perfected so passengers can enjoy their choice of inflight entertainment without being overheard or disturbed by their neighbor.

Comfortable set up

At first glance, the AIX prototype looks similar to a regular business class airplane seat. Safran has made only minor aesthetic adjustments to the headrest design.

But the difference is apparent as soon as the inflight entertainment is switched on. Sound starts blasting out of the headrest, droning out the pre-recorded airplane engine sounds already echoing through the experience room.

The screen plays the booming trailer for the recent Marvel movie “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Atmospheric music blares through the headrest, before the system switches to a couple of different audio experiences, including a podcast, for comparison.

It takes me a little while to get the headrest in the perfect spot — for maximum sound quality, you want it to be as close to your ears as possible.

But once it’s in the right setting, the personal speakers seem to work well. The whirring of the simulated airplane engine becomes largely background noise and my attention focuses on what I’m seeing and…