Are Noise-Canceling headphones effective?

07
2014-07
  • cornjuliox

    I work in a pretty noisy environment, lots of noise near me like the TV and people yelling and talking in really loud voices. It makes it really hard to concentrate and since I can't really move my PC to another part of the house I was thinking of getting a decent pair of noise-canceling headphones. I've never owned or used a pair before so I wanted to ask, do they block outside noise completely? As in, I'll hear nothing but silence as long as I'm wearing them?

    • Answers
  • BillN

    Like the other two posters said, the Noise Canceling headphones only work on constant noise. When I got mine, I thought they were defective, because I could still hear the TV. It wasn't until I took them off that I realized that they completely blocked the sound of the clothes dryer that was running. I love them on a plane as they block out 90% of the engine hum. If you want to block out variable sounds like people talking, TV's etc, you need to look at a headphone that goes into the ear, and functions like an earplug, while being a earphone as well. The cheap headphones like SkullCandy ($9 US) with the silicon seals do a better job of blocking voices than my Sony Noise Canceling over the ear headphones($50-$60 US).

  • Wayne Johnston

    To block all noise you want earplugs or ear-protectors. Any safety supply store will have them. You can probably pick them up at your local home store or lumberyard too. There are lots of kinds. Personally I prefer the compressible foam ones that re-expand to match the shape of your ears. Some people find them uncomfortable and prefer over the ear hearing protectors instead.

    Check out the dB reduction rating. There are differences between brands.

    The main advantages of earplugs are they work great and they are cheap. The main disadvantage is you look like a dweeb wearing them in your living room. Embrace your dweebdom and get your work done.

  • Xavierjazz

    Basically noise cancelling headphones work by analyzing the unwanted sound and then cancelling it in the phones.

    Complete silence at your ear also depends on how good the headphones are at blocking ambient sound.

  • cracked22

    I used to wear Sennheiser PXC 250 ( http://reviews.cnet.com/headphones/sennheiser-pxc-250/4505-7877_7-21258924.html) noise canceling headphones for flights (am Elite on Air Canada, with about 60 flights a year). Switch about a year ago to Shure SE 115 noise isolation ear phones ( http://store.shure.com/store/shure/en_US/pd/productID.121026300).

    The difference is amazing. With the Sennheisser's I could still hear people talk, and some of what was going on around me. With the Shure's, I am deaf to the world. As an added benefit, the Shure's don't require a battery, are smaller and more confortable.

  • PRG

    I tried $400 and $200 Sony noise-canceling headphones at Best Buy. They were hooked up to rock tracks, and you pressed a button to broadcast the sound of a jet engine from an external speaker. They didn't kill the jet sound, only lowered it by maybe half. They were the style that covers the ears with a cushioned rim - which would've blocked out part of the external sound anyway, without the noise-canceling. I also tried 2 other sets with the jet sound playing, different makes, and they were also ineffective. Plus, I didn't like the tone of any of them. They tended to muddy up the sound with too much bass. There were many other models but you weren't allowed to listen to them!

    So I don't recommend noise-canceling headphones, or Best Buy. I went to a pro music store (Long & McQuade in Toronto) and got a pair of Shure headphones for $60. Not noise-canceling, but covered the ears comfortably. So they lowered ambient noise, and most importantly sounded good,

  • mare

    Get some earplugs. Then put the noise canceling earphones over them. It's what I do. complete silence. My Bose broke. So I can't recommend them.


    • Related Question

    windows - Does this exist: software for noise cancellation
  • Alterlife

    I'm aware that the best option for noise cancelling is to buy myself a pair of noise cancelling headphones...

    But is there any software available that would use the pc mic and headphones to block background noise?


    • Related Answers
  • bastibe

    There are basically two methods for noise suppression

    1. Noise suppression using Wiener-filters. Experience shows that these sound awful even though they are mathematically "optimal". If you can get some information about the actual noise and if the noise is stationary and uncorrelated and if you pour in some additional brainpower, audio quality can be improved upon. But still, this is not a practical solution for most circumstances. (Won't work offline and uses far too much processing power...)
    2. Playback of latency-corrected, phase-inverted background noise together with the usable signal. This works rather well for headphones, although it does usually introduce some smearing in the basses. However, this, too, does not work offline as it needs the actual background noise signal from the surroundings. And it is not very usable for PCs since they introduce too much audio latency. You could try this with some minimal realtime-Linux-kernel, though.

    Based on my experiences with audio processing and various noise cancellation techniques, I would recommend some good sound-insulated headphones. Typically, these will result in better sound without the necessity of any signal processing tricks that won't work too well anyway.

  • Idiomatic

    Not possible for physical/hardware reasons.

    Noise canceling headphones work by recording sound and playing a phase inverted sound to cancel it. With a laptop the mic is first off shitty, and nicely in front of you this means sound coming from behind you will reach your ears first before it even hits the mic. Then it has to go through the computer onto the slow soundcard (likely a ping of .1seconds or more) to the speakers where it'll play. This lag time will be too great to deal with.

    So it comes down to mainly this:
    You and the mic hear different things (in headphones they are in your ears).
    Lag time from standard laptop soundcards is big, you often can't even get a guitar amp working well for this reason over your computer (near 0 in the headphones).

    This would, no matter how optimized result in a horrible experience.

  • harrymc

    See this article : Noise Cancelling in Software?.

    It's interesting, but has no solution.

  • Matthew Lock

    It's not actually noise cancelling but Chatterblocker can help you mask/ignore external sounds.

  • Dave York

    Using MATLAB and this guide / sample code:

    http://www.mathworks.com/help/dsp/examples/acoustic-noise-cancellation-lms-.html

    you could record the noise you are trying to cancel (to a wav) and build an audio output that would cancel it. You might also be able to modify the code to take the mic input as the noise and have it adaptively generate the output and play it out.

    Keep in mind noise cancellation works best with low frequency "mechanical" type noises. High pitch (high frequency) noises are much more difficult to cancel.

  • user281793

    If the sound you need to cancel is consistent, for example inside an airplane or the hum of a factory, it seems like the computer's lag shouldn't matter, because the sound is the same no matter how late it arrives. The key would be to accurately phase shift the resulting sound in your headphones. For example, one might try adjustable phase shifting software such as on http://freemusicsoftware.org/category/free-vst-effects-2/phase-shifter

    You could even record the background noise and then replay it. You would have to adjust the phase until it was the opposite of what your ears hear directly.

    If the poor laptop mic was an issue, you could bring along a used SM58 with you cheaply enough.

    Any feedback on this idea?