An apparatus comprising: an earpiece having a feed-forward microphone coupled to the environment outside the headphones, a feedback microphone coupled to an ear canal of a user when the earpiece is in use, a speaker coupled to the ear canal of the user when the earpiece is in use, a digital signal processor implementing feed-forward and feedback noise compensation filters between the respective microphones and the speaker, and a memory storing an ordered sequence of sets of filters for use by the digital signal processor; wherein each of the sets of filters includes a feed-forward filter that provides a different frequency-dependent amount of sound pass-through or cancellation, which in combination with residual ambient sound reaching the ear results in a total insertion gain at the ear of a user, the apparatus being characterized in that: the overall sound level at the ear when using each of the sets of filters, for a given ambient sound level, differs from the overall sound level at the ear when using the adjacent set of filters in the sequence by no more than 5 dBA between any two adjacent filter sets in the sequence, at least a subset of the sets of filters being further arranged for providing respective flat insertion gains (302a-3021) at different levels over at least three octaves in the human voice band, and for adding ambient sound at different levels outside of the human voice band when compared to the insertion gain achieved in a full active-noise reduction mode. an earpiece having a feed-forward microphone coupled to the environment outside the headphones, a feedback microphone coupled to an ear canal of a user when the earpiece is in use, a speaker coupled to the ear canal of the user when the earpiece is in use, a digital signal processor implementing feed-forward and feedback noise compensation filters between the respective microphones and the speaker, and a memory storing an ordered sequence of sets of filters for use by the digital signal processor; wherein each of the sets of filters includes a feed-forward filter that provides a different frequency-dependent amount of sound pass-through or cancellation, which in combination with residual ambient sound reaching the ear results in a total insertion gain at the ear of a user, the apparatus being characterized in that: the overall sound level at the ear when using each of the sets of filters, for a given ambient sound level, differs from the overall sound level at the ear when using the adjacent set of filters in the sequence by no more than 5 dBA between any two adjacent filter sets in the sequence, at least a subset of the sets of filters being further arranged for providing respective flat insertion gains (302a-3021) at different levels over at least three octaves in the human voice band, and for adding ambient sound at different levels outside of the human voice band when compared to the insertion gain achieved in a full active-noise reduction mode. the overall sound level at the ear when using each of the sets of filters, for a given ambient sound level, differs from the overall sound level at the ear when using the adjacent set of filters in the sequence by no more than 5 dBA between any two adjacent filter sets in the sequence, at least a subset of the sets of filters being further arranged for providing respective flat insertion gains (302a-3021) at different levels over at least three octaves in the human voice band, and for adding ambient sound at different levels outside of the human voice band when compared to the insertion gain achieved in a full active-noise reduction mode.