# The best noise cancelling headphone besides Bose

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-noise-cancelling-headphone-besides-bose/663611>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 15, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-noise-cancelling-headphone-besides-bose/663611 "2013-07-15T23:54:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-noise-cancelling-headphone-besides-bose/663611/24 "2014-04-07T22:51:34Z")

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> [@ZenBeam](#):
>
> The noise cancellation wouldn’t be applied to the music. They have a microphone to measure the sound of the environment, then cancel that. The music comes through without any cancellation.

Riiiiight. That’s what they said about Dolby. “No, it just filters out the hiss,” not thinking that the music also contains some of the frequencies being filtered. I hope that noise cancelling is more advanced than the audio butcher knife that was noise reduction, but people these days generally don’t have any better idea of what is an accurate delivery of audio than they did in the 1970s.

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**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-noise-cancelling-headphone-besides-bose/663611/25 "2014-04-07T22:58:34Z")

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> [@ZenBeam](#):
>
> How/why does that work? Wouldn’t they cancel the sound from person you’re trying to talk to as much as all the noise?

No because they do not cancel in the range of the human voice. Only low frequency noise can be canceled with the technology available today. I noticed it first on airplanes where I could hear the stewardesses better when I had my full sized noise canceling headphones on. The earbuds are even better because there is no cup around your ear that can block the human voice.

I am also told that runners like these because they can still hear street noise while they are listening to music. Helps to know what is going on around you and not be totally isolated from the world like those ones you jam down your into ear. I wouldn’t use them for that myself because I wouldn’t trust them to hold up to sweat.

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**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-best-noise-cancelling-headphone-besides-bose/663611/26 "2014-04-07T23:47:43Z")

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That tempts me. I can’t listen to anything since my Bone Fone died 30 years ago and I don’t want to miss the gentle crunching sound of a bicycle coming up behind me, much less a car.

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