If you haven’t heard of it, active noise cancellation or ANC gets rid of the majority of background noise inside headphones. If you have ever experienced noise cancellation in a pair of headphones or earbuds, you know that it kinda seems like magic. Whether you are in a busy store, walking down the street, or at the gym, it will make everything silent outside of what you are listening to in your headphones. Headphones that contain this feature are no longer as expensive as they used to be, and thankfully the technology is making its way into some affordable headphone and earbud brands.
In order to cancel noise, headphones or earbuds that use ANC have microphones on the inside and outside to constantly listen to outside ambient noise. Once noise cancellation is activated, a chip inside of your headphones or earbuds produces a sound wave that is exactly the opposite of the noise on the outside. By creating a wave that matches the peaks and troughs of the outside noise, it neutralizes the sound and cancels it out. It would be similar to setting two sides of an equation equal to each other, or, similar to having +1 and -1, and adding them to get 0. The opposite wave that the audio device creates is imperceptible by the ear, so it basically sounds like you are in a sound-proof room or under your covers with a pillow over your ears.
I find this technology to be very interesting as it really improves your listening experience, it can help you focus on a task, and the other potential uses it may have in the future. As user nkk5186 said back in 2019, companies like Bose are experimenting with other uses such as noise cancellation for your car to drown out road noise. The use of noise cancellation in cars is slightly different to audio devices, as Bose has fitted accelerometers to cancel out noise based on how fast you are going. I see this technology being adopted in many spaces including airlines, buses, gaming headsets, police and military headphones, etc. Noise cancellation in cars may also be harder to create because you have physical components of vibrating and shaking from various road conditions that audio devices don’t have to deal with. Nonetheless, I am still intrigued by this technology and will stay up to date in the future with how it develops.
Works cited:
https://www.soundguys.com/how-noise-cancelling-headphones-work-12380/
https://www.bang-olufsen.com/en/us/story/active-noise-cancellation
I have had two pairs of noise cancelling headphones and I’ve loved both of them. I do a lot of traveling and that required many long car rides, bus rides, plane rides, and train rides. In any of those situations if was always so nice to have those headphones to block out all of that background noise especially when it was difficult to fall asleep due to comfort conditions. I’ve never bothered to look into the science and technology behind ACN and it was more interesting than I thought it would have been. To me it almost feels like a smart device like its learning since it takes in those waves and has to be able to create its equal and opposite wave. I would like to see where they can go with this technology and if it will be able to get better at canceling out any high frequency waves to give that ultimate noise cancellation. When it comes to noise cancellation in cars, I see that as being a potential safety hazard and it would in a way take away one of our senses when we are driving. We need to be able to hear whats going on around us on the road whether it be a car we can’t see, but can hear or an emergency services siren. I think it would be nice for people in the car because from my experience highways aren’t the perfect place to be able to take a quiet nap in that car. It is a great technology that can seem kind of redundant at times as whenever I have my headphones in I’m listening to music and not just using it for noise cancellation. It does make the listening process more enjoyable though as it makes it easier to focus on just the sound of the music. I think there is many areas that ACN technology can be applied to in the world today and there will be more to come as we progress on into the future.
https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-active-noise-cancellation-anc-headphones-explained
It is said that in 1978, Dr. Amar G. Bose, the founder of BOSE, wanted to listen to music on a plane from Zurich to Boston, but found that the noise of the aircraft engine completely drowned out the sound of the headphones and interfered with the interest of listening to music with headphones. , which inspired his research on active noise reduction technology. After getting off the plane, he began to deduce and check the calculation, and wrote the most original equation for noise reduction headphones.
When Bose first conceived the concept of noise reduction technology, his idea was very simple. He wanted to design a headphone that could hear sound, which was easier said than done. It wasn’t until 1986 that Bose built a prototype, and soon the product was on the market. Bose has almost become synonymous with noise-cancelling headphones. It’s a multi-million dollar achievement, the result of years of research and development. All of this stems from this flight.
The principle of active noise reduction technology is not very complicated, that is, by collecting noise, and then after the internal noise reduction circuit operation, the reverse sound waves of these noises are emitted to cancel the noise. Therefore, how to clearly distinguish different noises before they reach the ears, and then release the corresponding sound waves to cancel them, is the key to this technology.
With the convenience of transportation, travel has become more convenient, but I believe that everyone will have the habit of listening to music, watching movies, and playing games when taking public transportation, subways, trains and other means of transportation. After all, traveling by car is relatively boring, so many people All began to use headphones to get through this long car ride. However, the noise in public places is often relatively high, which makes it difficult for us to listen to songs and watch dramas. Therefore, Bluetooth headphones with noise reduction function came into being, which can greatly alleviate the interference of noise and let us enjoy the sound quietly. It will not damage our hearing by turning up the volume. This technology will undoubtedly bring a lot of benefits to everyone’s life.
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/348012601
This article was a great read, and I believe Noise Canceling Headphones are the new thing that people want now. I believe they are great for headphones but later in the article you mentioned the idea of using it for different things such as putting them in cars. I wanted to do more research on that since I thought it can be a safety hazard if it was in them since if a siren went off or anything people would not be able to hear it. In the article below, I found out that would not be the case, and it would prevent other outsides noises such as the moter and different noises like that. I now believe that this can be a great idea, and would make it a much better experience for the driver to install this into the cars.
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-active-noise-cancellation-in-cars
I always wanted a pair of noise cancelling headphones that I decided I would invest and get a pair over the summer. I got it for my internship so I could take calls even if others are doing something around me so I can focus. I was looking over headphones, I was trying to find ones that weren’t too expensive. But my parents told me that sometimes the noise canceling headphones don’t always work. So after doing research I decided to get headphones that were good bass as well as noise canceling BOSE headphones. I didn’t want ones that were in the ear but more so over the ear. I thought it would be the best because of piercings, it won’t rest on piercings and cause issues.)
I never thought about the way that they work, I had no idea that there was a chip inside the headphones that is activated to go against the waves outside. I find this invention interesting and think that this is in fact the start of something bigger. I found from a source that they basically neutralize your ear (Furseth).
As a person with ADD, my brain is constantly going crazy. Thoughts and everything, when I’m able to just sit and focus now with noise canceling headphones. I do have an issue sometimes where I get a ringing in my ear, it’s not all the time but I sometimes hate that I can hear myself swallow or my ears click. I think it would be cool if there was a way to turn off the outside noise a like 75% but still have a little bit of noise that’s not distracting.
Furseth, Jessica. “Noise-Cancelling Headphones: The Secret Survival Tool for Modern Life.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 16 Mar. 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/16/noise-cancelling-headphones-sound-modern-life#:~:text=The%20technology%2C%20known%20as%20active,sounds%20cancelling%20each%20other%20out..
ANC (Active noise cancelation) is quite impressive, it doesn’t work for everybody. I should know I have this issue. I have a condition called tinnitus. Tinnitus more or less has ringing occurring in your ears. I have some form of it in my right ear. While ANC does not cause tinnitus. It isn’t as effective when you have it. Since it uses white noise to cancel out noises from the outside. that white noise can be on the same frequencies where tinnitus occurs. So, when I use my ANC headphones at times, I won’t hear the outside but hear the ringing in my right ear due to the white noise causing.
But for ANC to be using cars and such. I believe ANC needs to adapt to people with tinnitus. Since it is on the rise do to TWS (true wireless stereo) like air pods being used more often causing hearing damage to younger people, like us (1). And for ANC to be more effective that. There has to be more user control for it. Not with how the device sounds but what frequencies it can cancel out. Because if I can program what frequency I want it to cancel it would reduce the ringing in my right ear. The only downside to this is that the ANC won’t be as powerful. But I think most people are willing to accept that to protect their hearing health.
1) https://www.tinnitusformula.com/library/your-teenagers-tinnitus-and-why-its-on-the-rise/
This is very interesting as I had no idea that the technology for noise cancellation was so complex. I always thought that it was just simple sound proofing with insulation or something similar to that. I did not know that it was due to chips inside of the headphones that are constantly monitoring the wavelengths of sound from the outside. I believe that that is similar to a lot of technology in today’s age. I underestimate how far our society has advanced in technology and when I hear things like this it is kind of freaky to think about how much that we can do. It sounds a bit like artificial intelligence with the way that the chips are always checking the sound and altering the sound that the headphones produce.
I do think that it would be beneficial to have the technology in cars. I have been in some electric cars and because there is no motor, I actually feel like the noise is louder because the motor does not provide any white noise. Because electric cars are becoming more popular, I believe that this technology would be helpful to get rid of the extra sound from driving at fast speeds.
I am also curious to see if this technology could be used medically to help people who suffer from tinnitus if they could target the same frequency of sound that the person hears.
Overall, this is very interesting and seems like it can be used for a lot of good once the technology is expanded.