Talk:Noise-cancelling headphones

message: I feel the current photo doesn't do justice to the article. The best noise cancelling earphones are the "monitor"-style ones, which completely surround the ear and actively fade external sounds. The current photo shows a picture of in-ear earphones, which cannot come close in terms of noise cancelling to monitor style earphones. I feel the article needs a better quality image so I'm replacing it with a shot of my own headphones, tell me what you think...
Feel free to voice any objections, etc.. here
Gamer112 (talk) 09:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there's room for more than one photo. Binksternet (talk) 10:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The photo provided by Gamer112 is of TDK ST200 headphones, which are a passive, noise-isolating model (not noise-canceling). This pic should probably be replaced.Cheakamus (talk) 16:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: New Picture

message: I think, perhaps, the information on insulating headphones should be moved to a different article. Am not sure they are normally called 'Noise-cancelling headphones'. I may well be wrong here, though Andrewferrier 22:57, 2004 Dec 30 (UTC)
Definitely. Unless we add another section here stating that there is a difference between active and passive noise-cancelling, there's bound to be a lot of confusion. --@@ron 08:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Insulating Headphones

message: :: By the way, how good is your Sony earphone? Is that the $150 MDR-NC11? Does it work in a 747? Does it work against crying kids? (Guess not, kids are not crying in bass. They are six-mile-high devils.) -- Toytoy 06:42, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)
I have the MDR-NC20 "over-ear" style headphones. They are generally effective but they're not magic. Their cancelling is confined to the bass and low-midrange frequencies and they depend on the usual passive isolation for higher frequencies.
In casual A-B listening tests, I found their cancellation to be very similar to the much-more expensive Bose QuietComfort-II phones, BUT:
The Sony phones have two defects:
# They introduce some background hiss; the Bose phones did not seem to do this.
# In an environment with fast air pressure changes (as I experience riding on a bus as the bus flexes as a result of road shocks), the headphone amplifiers frankly overload. With minor pressure changes and minor overloading, this leads to "picket fencing" of the noise cancellation. With larger pressure changes (as the bus hits a hole in the road) this leads to complete wipe-out of the sound. I haven't had a chance to take the Bose phones on the bus yet, so I can't say whether they suffer from the same defect. This defect is *NOT* apparent on airplanes, by the way, where the Sony headphones were very pleasant.
Neither the Bose nor the Sony 'phones block much speech, cell phone ringtones, etc.
Atlant 14:23, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Real-world performance of noise-cancelling headphones

message: Papabrow added:
* Teachers let their students use this as a means of study.
What did you mean by that ? (reverting for now) Taw 09:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Teachers 

message: Just for the benefit of folks who are editing the article and/or debating this point:
You realize there's no difference in these two statements, right? While I, myself, tend to like the new "opposite polarity" phrase better (because it has a sort of immediate understandability), if you think about the Fourier transform and signals in the frequency domain instead of in the time domain, you'll see that a signal of the "opposite polarity" has all of its component frequencies shifted by 180 degrees compared to the reference signal.
So both versions of the statement are equally correct ;-) .
Atlant 14:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Um, no. There is no such thing as phase, in the time domain. You have to make some assumptions for it to become meaningful. Reversing polarity is as simple as swapping two wires. That requires no assumptions. Greglocock 10:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Polarity is normally not used for AC signals, though possibly with the exception of the dot code for transformer windings.
The 180 degree phase shift tends to indicate the same amplitude, where opposite polarity indicates nothing about amplitude. Gah4 (talk) 02:44, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Opposite polarity" versus "180 degrees out of phase" 

message: The article states: "A common example of poorly adjusted noise cancellation is the Bose QuietComfort series of headphones, although other manufacturers including Sony/Aiwa also make noise-canceling headphones. These are by no means all or the best engineers at headphone noise cancellation."
In addition to the bad grammar (perhaps the original writer isn't fluent in English?), what is meant by "poorly adjusted"? Without a reference, it comes across as Bose-bashing. For example, what would be an example of a noise-canceling headphone that this properly adjusted? While it may be desirable to have a noise-canceling headphone that used sound cancellation across the entire spectrum, it's just not practical or cost-effective given today's technology - it like saying that automobiles that get 50 miles/gallon aren't "properly adjusted" because they don't get 400 miles/gallon.
I'm temped to remove/rewrite these sentences, but I would like to give others a chance to weigh in first. Anechoic Man 22:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Be bold.  It's a blatant review / opinion.  There, it's gone. -- Rogerborg 15:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "poorly adjusted" 

message: According to the Sony Web site (at least what comes up when accessed from the USA) lists the model MDR-NC6.  Is that the same thing as the NC-6 that appears in the list?  I don't have time to research it, myself.  Perhaps there is potential confusion with the model numbers of products, and the countries in which they are offered. TJKluegel 01:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of models of noise-cancelling headphones 

message: ::Is noise-cancelling headphones safe to use for driving? Regular headphones block out all noise, but noise-cancelling headphones should only block road, engine and wind noise. Right?
::::"Regular headphones block out all noise"
:::No. They may reduce all frequencies more equally, but you don't get silence. Only low+mid frequencies can be actively cancelled, so NC headphones have at least as much noise absorption as normal, to remove the high treble noise as well. 
:::However, back to your question - being aware of your surroundings is quite fundamental to road safety. Horns, engine defects, revs, approaching vehicles, sirens, crossing signals, indicators ticking, yelling pedestrians, hitting cats-eyes, rumble-strips, non-skid surfaces at junctions, silence when a wet road becomes an icy road ... 
:::--195.137.93.171 (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Driving with headphones

message: Is it just me or does that section seem to be a thinly-veiled commercial?  If so, it would violate NPOV.  I await other opinions.  AarrowOM 17:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the wording does indeed remind you of a commercial.  -- Anders. 26/1-2009  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.226.87.164 (talk) 12:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: History section

message: The external link to the NYT review is "members only".  This should be replaced by a link to a site that is freely accessible. 99.11.160.111 (talk) 07:33, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  External link to a members only site 

message: In my edit today I paraphrased someone else's contribution, after reading online abstracts of the papers cited.  The papers do support the article content, but are small studies so I wonder whether they are really reliable.  If you have more knowledge of this field, can you please suggest any secondary sources?  Such references would be preferable according to the WP:WPNOTRS policy and if there's wider evidence, then secondary sources would reflect that.--Egmonster (talk) 03:39, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secondary sources please! 

message: In my opinion one reference by a health blog doesn't really count as enough of a reason to put in this rather odd claim. I'll leave it in for the time being but may zap it if I ever pay attention to this article again.Greglocock (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't feel qualified to "zap" anything, but I note that the link for the queasiness claim goes to a headphone review site. This type of site often features reviews paid for by the companies recommended; in other words, this is spam. The site mentions but does not substantiate or cite a source for the claim. A cursory search shows enough mentions of this phenomenon to indicate it really is a thing for some people. Here's a potential better link, though not an ideal one: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/technology/personaltech/20askk.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1390593879-TVv/GobMdvaPqn+VUVV9yQ 63.142.214.71 (talk) 20:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever source you find will have to meet the requirements of WP:MEDRS since we are talking about a potential health hazard. The very stiff requirements of MEDRS serve as a major stumbling block for those who would have Wikipedia describe speculative hazards or personal stories about hazards. Binksternet (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

text: That NYT article still sounds more like anecdote than actual evidence. Greglocock (talk) 21:16, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Queasy FUD

message: It seems to me that the most important problem in building noise cancelling is that it has to correct for the signal from the speaker getting back to the microphone.  Under some conditions, usually when not wearing them, I have had them go into a loud feedback mode. There is nothing in the article that I see about this. Gah4 (talk) 02:48, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  cancellation and feedback