Noise Cancelling Earphones
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010The main purpose of Noise canceling earphones is to reduce the undesired ambient or acoustic sounds through the ANC or active noise control method. The circuitry uses the earphones electronic signal to produce anti-noise signals. This results in a sort of destructive interference which results in the canceling of the ambient noise which is heard in an earphone. These earphones can be very needy for a passenger who wants to sleep in noisy vehicles such as subway cars or airplanes. It also helps the people who want to enjoy the music from their i Pods or phones without feeling the need to raise excess volume.
The ANC method used by noise canceling earphones cancels the lower frequency segment of the noise and higher frequency noises are prevented by the soundproofing techniques. The ANC method does not affect the high frequencies much and soundproofing reduces the need of complicated circuitry. These work very well when the user is alongside a continuously humming refrigerator or the cabin of an airplane but their effectiveness can be reduced during quickly changing audio frequencies such as speeches. Earlier, these noise cancellation qualities used to come in headphones only which would help airline passengers or helicopter pilots while flying. But these used to involve lots of circuitry which would increase the size and weight of the headphones.
Many headphones consumed power supplied by batteries which had to be occasionally either recharged or replaced. Also, the quality of noise cancellation decreased with the decrease in the battery life. Earlier models also used to produce additional noises such as hisses which would disrupt the listening experience and sometimes also damage the ear drums if they were too sensitive. The new models of headphones incorporate battery in their existing space but this does not reduce the weight of the headphones. This problem is solved by using earphones which support the noise canceling features.


