Ask HN: Do you use noise cancelling headphones?

Only when on the plane. I could see wearing noise canceling headphones all the time if I lived in a particularly urban area.

Yes. I've used my QC35 for several years now on a daily basis, and they've been one of the few tech game-changers for me personally.

I generally use them to lower the volume I can play the actual environmental-noise blocking audio, which is normally a combination (ie at the same time) of white noise (specifically RainyMood) and whatever rythmic soundtrack will help me stay in flow.

I mean by that I don't use them alone, but they enable me to play stuff for extended periods so the risk to my hearing is considerably lower than playing it without noise cancelling.

Yeah I use them all day long. They do a good job of blocking out background noise from living in the middle of a city.

Use plain old corded with plug headphones.

This is very common; I think there are probably memes about it.

I used too, but I have developed an intuition that active noise cancelation is harmful in the long run. This is using some of the best options (Sony, Apple). Just weird ear sensations and "phantom" sounds after extended usage (maybe like tinnitus).

Not much.

My Bose QC's made me nauseous when I started using them. I acclimatized to a degree but only ever use them in flights. And they "sound" weird compared to eg. covering my ears with my palms.

Also tried AirPods Pro and didn't like the feature (or the amount they stick into your ears); swapped for the cheaper / older model which I love.

Slightly off topic: what’s a good headset/EarPod mic that eliminates my background noise so that who I’m calling doesn’t hear the noise around me?

I used to wear them pretty much every waking moment, but recently I have become very suspicious of their effect on me.

I don't necessarily think it has a negative affect on my hearing, but I feel in general that it brings down my outward awareness as a whole. It's a very isolating experience, being in noise-canceling, and I think normalizing being in that zone conditions my mind to become very insular and broadly ignorant of my surroundings. As I start wearing them less, this noticeably diminishes.

And speaking specifically to my personal situation, I feel it directly aggravates my anxiety through this mechanism.

My Bose QC 45s have the most annoying low battery warning I've ever experienced. Beginning at 10% battery, every 5 minutes all input media is paused so a computer generated voice can inform me "BATTERY LOW, PLEASE CHARGE NOW." 10% battery can last for up to an hour, but woe betide you for trying to utilize the time.

It is an atrocious UX. It cannot be disabled via the paired mobile app. Do not buy these headphones!

Yes and I think it'll effect your hearing gradually. So will music, but they're too good to give up.

I upgraded from QC25s to Bose 700s.

While the Bose 700’s integrated non-user-replaceable battery is one annoyance everyone is moving to, you also can’t use the headphones at all while charging. Not even in plugged-in analog mode without noise cancellation.

It’s a brick while charging.

I also feel like the ear-pad covers have poorer durability than previous generations. I’m a bit rough with them (e.g. throw in backpack, I never use the case).

Don't listen to music/audio much with headphones anymore because my inner ears started to hurt from it. But I do use construction ear muffs often to drown out noise - they're quite effective and are basically the same thing OP is asking about (not listening music). The ear protection is much cheaper

I tried to use Bose QC's at home for a few years but eventually gave up. The problem with Bose is they noise cancel everything but voice, which is precisely the opposite of what I want cancelled. I like hearing footsteps, pets and all the normal noises of the house but I don't want to hear my wife gossiping on the phone about so-and-so's parents at the school and their messy divorce.

Bose QC are specifically targeted at air travel where you can noise cancel the airplane noise but still talk to the stewardess or your neighbor. I found a no-name brand of noise canceling headphones off Amazon a much better solution because they had better ear pads that isolated sound while their worse noise canceling didn't give you the same "pressure" feeling that the Bose headphones give you. And they dulled the voice chatter more effectively. It seems like if voice chatter doesn't have the high frequency component it is easier for me to ignore it. I think it's also why I find it next to impossible to pay attention to someone dialed into an online meeting.

Eventually circumstances allowed me to buy nicer homes with dedicated office space and I find I don't use noise canceling devices any longer. My current home is an executive-style-home-on-the-cheap and has noise isolating insulation in interior walls which really helps.

What is strange is that the emotion present in the voice chatter around me is a huge factor. My son can be gaming in the office with me and talking with his friends and I have no problem with focus. If he gets frustrated or too hyped up, I have no hope of concentrating and I have to kick him out of the room. We have since worked out an agreement and he doesn't play LoL or Destiny while I am working, the two games that cause anger management issues for him. :)

Sony XM3. I do the same.

Noise cancelling headphones need to generate exactly opposite "anti-noise" to cancel noise. This of course works better at lower frequencies.

They're near magical at cutting down the rumble of ventilation systems, airplane wind noise, and even bus engines. But spoken voice contains high-pitch elements that they just can't track and so you still hear it. Though attenuated, it's at about the same ratio to the attenuated background noise.

For me, personally, this means I generally don't use them as just noise cancellation devices. I'd rather have the whole sound spectrum than "cone of silence" with voices still cutting through. I find playing some music, even at a low level, solves that, but I concentrate better with random background burble than with music.

Mine are QC35s. I also have a cheap pair that cost about 1/8 as much that doesn't have quite the "whoa" effect of the Bose ones, but still very satisfyingly cuts down diesel engine roar in the rear seating row of a bus!

Yes, depending on noise levels, but I try not to, because I think it's bad to have no airflow around the ear.

Using the tozo nc9s and the soundcore q20 for work. Interchangeably used depending on the portability and noise levels. The nc9s are portable and decent at cutting out droning noises but they have a n occasional weird desynchronisation when you listen to music, one earbud might be a few millis behind the other in stereo :( The soundcore is solid. Both are quite affordable compared to Bose, Sony…

I use a nice set of over the ear headphones with ANC capability but turned off. I prefer the regular isolation, not the active. The active does some weird things to my hearing that may be related to some other things I have going on.

Sony XM4 headphones. They are pricey, but a fantastic bit of kit. The noise canceling is not perfect but good enough that sometimes I will just wear them while walking around even if not listening to anything. I like how they "dull everything out" giving you room to think.

i just use cheap apple earbuds 90% of the time, I find that's plenty along with some nice easy listening symphonic music, if I need to kill the background noise.

Yes, I wear them over my better wired in-ear monitors that have good passive isolation.

An especially good combo on noisy flights, etc.

I use apple airpods max they work great!

I need noise cancelling (or close to it) headphones I can sleep on my side with. I have a crappy $20 headband I got from Amazon that does OK but lets a fair amount of sound leak in. I live on an extremely loud street and can block some of it out with a noise machine, but find headphones needed to really block everything out. Anyone try a pair they like?

i use my apple gen 2 airpods and the noise cancellation is not nothing, but it's all still no match for traffic noise, which is what i really want something for. i do still wear them in the cafe and they help, tho like others, i wonder if they're really just destroying my hearing even faster.

i also have some model of these Jabra call center-type headphones with the slide down/out microphone boom. They don't have active noise cancellation, i don't think?, but they're pretty good at just keeping out outside noise. if i have anything do with it, everyone on my calls/zooms must use a headset and microphone -- i don't want garbage echoing and reverberating and people missing things just because someone is too lazy to get a quality audio setup. ditto podcasts -- 'professional' podcasts and i hear the main show host's voice echoing off his own walls? f** is wrong with you? for my coworkers, we're remote, great, but take this shit seriously, at least on my time. :) these particular Jabras i have are too tight on my ears - i need to see if i can make them clamp with a bit less force.

https://www.jabra.com/business/office-headsets/jabra-evolve/...

getting true hearing-protecting headphones of some type so that i can walk/jog/be on the street without cranking the volume up to eleventy would be so legit. there's a ton of noise, but if we got rid of just car tire noise, we'd probably be good.