Noise reducing headphone or closed headset, Which one should you employ?

Posted on February 16, 1984 Updated on September 30, 2014

This site It’s all I’m pondering right now. Sooooooo cool!

Hello and welcome to the new series of answers to the earpiece inquiries. Ever wanted to find out about something headset, earpiece or headset related? Now is your opportunity. Due to the large amount of questions we’re so repeatedly asked, you’ll find we’ve reached into our mailbox and chosen the 9 most important (and most often submitted) inquiries. Enjoy.
Oh, by the way, if your query isn’t here, then just dispatch us an communication and check back in a few… you could see it featured within the later series. Thanks.

That’s one of the most commonly asked inquiries, we get it much of the time and, frankly, we’re sick of sending the same stock email over and over again. So, we chose to resolve it once and for all.

Now, before we go any longer, I’m off to draft the standard email that directs you to this article, back in any minute…

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…You’re still there? Good. I stopped off to buy a vitamin drink including a cup of tea too, sorry.

OK. To state it simply, there are 2 varieties of noise reduction, active and passive.

Passive noise cancellation/reduction is usually a by-product of sporting the headsets in the 1st place. If a headset covers your ears up, it essentially has the identical noise cancellation effect as a pair of earmuffs. The sound has to work that much more difficult to travel to your ear how it must initially go through a hard surface. Passive noise reduction arrives largely from blocking, or covering your ears and listening to a louder sound in closer proximity. If your friend is attempting to speak with you and you can’t hear them due to your headphones, then that is passive noise reduction.

Active noise cancellation/reduction is a little more mechanical. Headsets that actively cancel outer noise do so by creating a low field of white noise close to your ear, this effectively masks outside sound and is a function in and of itself, away from the sound reproduction performance of those speakers.

Being truthful, anything you place in or around your ear includes a passive noise reduction effect, but only headsets equipped with noise reducing functions will create a masking white sound. This noise will not interfere with the performance of your headphones, but it’ll cover the sound from wind, rain, road works and other train passengers and their noisy phone conversations.

Noise cancellation/reduction headphones will do a much better job of drowning out the sound pollution produced by barking dogs, train bulletins, bad street buskers and those charity trolls who approach you in the street.

Joking aside, this is a frequently asked query because it is a very good one to ask. Noise cancellation features significantly add to the cost of the headphones and it is completely worth knowing what you are purchasing before you lay your hard-earned down onto the counter.