Digital Home Thoughts: Noise Cancelling Headphones Group Test At Bit-tech.net

"Active noise cancelling requires a powered circuit which produces what is effectively an inverse wave form. Tiny microphones sample outside noise and an on-board DSP calculates an inverse waveform - anti-noise - which is then emitted inside the headphones, cancelling out the unwanted background noise. It works best for continuous droning - you will still be able to hear people talking. The effect is absolutely amazing. You can be sitting in a fairly busy, air-conditioned office environment, put these on, and suddenly hear (or not) complete silence. It's eerie. Unfortunately, the inverse wave form is not always exactly correct, and the side effect of this is that the headphones sometimes sound like they have a background 'hiss', much like the hiss from analogue tapes, accompanying the silence. The better the headphones, the less hiss, usually."



This article compares three top noise cancelling headphones - ones by Sony, Sennheiser and Acoustic Authority. I personally have the Sony ones and was quite happy with them until the noise cancelling part broke so now they are just regular headphones. While they did work they were great and perfect for airplanes, but I have found it to be relatively common for noise cancelling headphones to be relatively fragile (or so I hear from anecdotal evidence). Anyways, it is interesting that they still serve as a great set of headphones. But in this article, the Sennheiser PXC 250s are the clear winners. Anyone own a pair? I wouldn't mind upgrading at this point.