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Announcing Our First Wireless Bluetooth Headphones
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Drop+Audiophile
fogcat5
10
May 2, 2019
sounds interesting -- I'll listen for updates
I've been wearing ANC bluetooth headphones on the 1+ bus ride to work, and a different brand ANC all day in the office lately. I'm worried it's the cause of an annoying high pitched ring I hear all the time now.
I ran across this headphone note while looking for another brand of bluetooth headphones to try in the office. Could be the one!
Having the ANC with a switch to disable it entirely would be a good option for people who feel it ruins the sound.
ElectronicVices
2937
May 6, 2019
fogcat5That sounds like tinnitus and is typically caused from listening too loud or working in highly noise environments. Hearing damage is cumulative and permanent, I would get myself to an audiologist if I were you.
Evshrug
3772
Community
May 15, 2019
fogcat5If you think about the principles behind ANC, it operates by making a sound of equal pitch and equal loudness (pressure) as the sounds around you, but in the inverse phase to cancel out the soundwaves. You’ve got some mic trying to record your environment and rush to convert it to digital, flip the phase, convert from digital back to analog, and play it through the same speakers producing your music.
I see a few problems with that.
•Tech isn’t perfect. Even with a budget much higher than $300, we don’t have gear accurate enough to totally invert ambient noise (it gets close) and it will also create some noise that wasn’t there in the environment (ANC’s characteristic “hiss”).
•It interferes with your music. Say something in the environment has the same pitch as a note in your music, maybe a slightly different tone or timbre... but part of it might get cancelled out.
•You are constantly subjecting your ears to pressure.
Now, I was recently at a SUPER NOISY event, (102 dB, sometimes peaking so loudly that the Sony WH-1000XM2 I was wearing would distort while trying to cancel out the environment noise), but I wore the Sony’s with ANC on for about 8 hours a day to get some relief. I do believe the ANC helped... without any music playing. Oh, and I was also wearing musician’s earplugs underneath, reducing sound pressure by about another 20 dB (Thank you Etymotic!). But Given that the best ANC headphones on the market (IMO) couldn’t completely perfectly recreate the ambient noise, I could still hear stuff, and if I added the sound pressure of music (especially loud enough to drown out the environment), I think my ears would have hurt even worse. Most of the time, full-on earplugs or sealed IEMs provide better noise isolation than ANC headphones anyway (especially Etymotic, their ERP4 with triple-flange tips have some of the best isolation in the industry, but any sealed IEM will do well). In my situation, I still had to be able to hear people and talk, hahah!
Man, that event was rough.
fogcat5
10
May 15, 2019
ElectronicVicesI think you are right - but I'm not sure that an audiologist would do more than give a diagnosis.
A good idea would be to use more passive audio protection - ANC isn't intended to be hearing protection.
ElectronicVices
2937
May 16, 2019
fogcat5Ringing can be a byproduct of other issues as well, more than likely tinnitus but only a professional could make the definitive call. If you aren't experiencing any other issues (imbalance, congestion, vertigo, etc..) then the visit may not be warranted.
Evshrug
3772
Community
Jul 10, 2019
ElectronicVicesI believe I read somewhere (you know what starting a sentence that way indicates) that even a person with healthy hearing can go into an isolated, anechoic chamber, and still hear a ringing due to the blood rushing through their ears and the pressure of the air. Tinnitus is often just a case of that “baseline” noise level rising to where the person is aware of it more often. Studies have even identified cases of Tinnitus where another person could actually lean in and hear the affected person’s ears emitting an audible ringing sound!
Sadly, there is no cure, only treatments and best practices for prevention.
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