Noise Cancelling Headphones For Peaceful Listening
Go straight to recommended products.
Noise cancelling headphones are designed to prevent you from hearing outside noise and are specially designed for airline and train. They use a microphone in the ear piece to sense the sound around the earpiece, and an active electronic circuit that amplifies, inverts the signal, and adds it to the music signal to cancel the acoustic noise pressure at the earpiece. (Some of the best noise cancelling headphones use digital signal processing (DSP) to create better isolation performance.) Because noise cancelling headphones have an internal headphone amplifier, there is no need or benefit from external headphone amplification. Simple 'closed-back' [aka 'sealed'] headphones block high frequencies generally as well as noise cancelling cans, but do not isolate low frequencies as well, so are not as good for travel purposes. Noise cancelling headphones are almost always closed, and block high frequencies with the headphone seal itself. In Ear headphones provide far more noise blocking ability like true earplugs, but some people don't like putting them deep in their ears.
Noise Cancelling Headphone Reviews
The Audio Technica ATH-ANC7b is a very good performing, 'entry level' noise cancelling headphone and provides good low frequency isolation; high frequency noise isolation is not as good due to the smaller 'on-ear' earpad size. These cans would be good for walking around the city, as they still allow for some awareness of your surroundings. The Monster Beats by Dr. Dre noise cancelling headphone is full-size and provides another step up in both style and isolation; the Beats looks great and folds up too. The Sennheiser PXC 450 provides very good noise cancelling using Sennheiser's own "NoiseGuard" circuitry. A newer audiophile contender is the superbly warm tone of the DENON AH-NC800 a full-size noise-cancelling headphone with deeply padded cushions and impressively clear acoustics.
We've listed our top picks below, or see all noise cancelling headphones.
