How Does Noise Cancelling Headphone Work?

In the market, there are many models and brands of headphones that you can buy. From hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars in price. Aside from the good qualities of the headphones, you will also notice that most premium headphones come with noise-canceling features.

With this unique feature, you will not be disturbed by any background sound coming from the fans, cars or any other sound in your surroundings. With this function, the background sound can ultimately be muted and you can enjoy the nice experience of using the headphone.

However, how do these noise-canceling headphones work? Is there a scientific explanation behind this unique function? How does the surrounding gets muted from just this headphone?

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What is Noise Cancellation?

To explain it in simple terms, the noise-canceling function is anything that protects you from the sound that you do not want to hear. But this term actually refers to the technology that is built into the headphones to ensure that any background sound can be avoided from disturbing you to enjoy the quality of sound you are trying to hear.

Generally speaking, the noise canceling feature can be divided into two forms; passive or active. Both of them have a similar objective but it is achieved in different ways.

Basically, passive noise canceling will absorb the sound while active noise canceling will stop them. Passive noise canceling uses materials and structures in the headphones to either muffle the sound or prevent it from reaching the ear.

This will be the ear cups or smooth rubber cushion that closes the ears together with tying the head firmly to make sure that it stays fixed at the side of your head. Due to that, it can be said that all headphones with a position slightly above the ears will have the passive noise-canceling feature.

Active noise canceling is a bit more advanced in that it relies on microphones and speakers to detect the disturbing sound and neutralize it.

How Does Active Noise-Cancelation(ANC) Work?

It prevents disturbing sound by using a disturbance that destroys or acts as an anti-sound.

In other words, it uses a sound wave that is opposite of the disturbing sound to press the disturbing sound before it reaches your ear.

ANC headphones will have small microphones to capture the disturbing sound. This sound will be included in the active noise-canceling process which analyzes and produce an opposite anti-sound version.

The anti-sound wave will play its role through the speakers of the headphones to neutralize the disturbing sound so that you will not hear them. The function of the ANC is not perfect but it is decent enough.

It might not be able to close your ear 100% yet it is capable of tuning down the background noise to a negligible level.

Strong frequency, unorganized, and high pitch noise like a kid crying or barking dogs are just too much for the ANC technology to handle, thus the features of the passive noise canceling on headphones had helped to reduce such background noise.

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Are Headphones With Noise Canceling Features Bad For The Ears?

Well, not really. When it comes to our hearings, it might be better for you since you are less likely to raise the sound of your headphones to counter the unwanted background noise.

However, if you are searching for ANC headphones on the internet, you might come across stories about people who experience discomfort in their eardrums and several cases of neck and head pain while using them.

These symptoms are highly related to the change in pressure in their ear canals but the cause might be related more to your brain. The reduction of low-frequency sound(due to noise-canceling headphones) has tricked the brain into thinking that there is a decrease in air pressure.

In normal circumstances, when there is truly reduced air pressure, it will cause a sucking sensation in your eardrums. But in this case, only the brain is thinking as such while in reality, there is no such decrease in air pressure in the surrounding.

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