Are you using your noise-cancelling headphones safely? Audiologists have recently raised concerns that ANC over-ears or earbuds could be contributing to hearing problems in our increasingly headphone-wearing world. The link isn't certain, but still, it's better to be safe than sorry, eh?
You don't need to worry, just read on and we'll show you how to make sure your hearing is protected while enjoying the benefits of active noise cancellation.
- Deep dive: How active noise cancelling technology works
How does ANC potentially affect your hearing?
The jury is still out, but audiologists have recently raised concerns that active noise cancellation contributes to a condition called Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). This is a neurological condition in which the brain struggles to make sense of certain sounds and speech.
More research is indeed needed to establish whether the use of ANC headphones plays a part, but the experience of Sophie, a 25-year-old administration assistant from London, as told by the BBC, suggests that it might.
Sophie struggles to discern voices in noisy environments. "Even though I can hear that there are noises going on, I can't listen to where the noise is coming from. I know it's the person's voice, I just can't really compute it quick enough," she told BBC News.
The BBC article reports that while her hearing test results proved normal, a private audiologist subsequently diagnosed her with APD and believes that 'the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones' could have 'a part to play' in the cause of her diagnosis. Having grown up in the quiet countryside, Sophie supposedly found life in London loud and overwhelming and took to wearing noise-cancelling headphones for up to five hours a day to block out environmental noise.
While APD is more common in neurodivergent people and those who have suffered a brain injury or a middle-ear infection as a child, five NHS audiology departments reportedly told the BBC of an increase in young people suffering from hearing issues, but whose hearing tests as normal. They supposedly have no trouble picking up on sounds, but their ability to process those sounds is an issue.
The theory goes that if you wear noise-cancelling headphones for prolonged periods, you're not hearing a diverse enough range of sounds, and so you're not training your brain to filter out those that are unimportant. Hence your brain is not learning to hone in on important sounds.
If you're in a noisy bar, for example, your brain may not realise that it should prioritise the speech of your companion over the music playing through the speakers. And so it presents all the sounds as equally important in one big onslaught of noise. No wonder people with APD are easily overwhelmed.
How to use ANC headphones safely
Again, it's worth reiterating that currently there is no proven connection between noise-cancelling headphones and hearing problems. In fact, ANC can to some extent help protect your hearing – by damping down outside sounds, you can listen to music at lower volumes while still hearing the details clearly. That's clearly preferable to cranking up the volume to drown out a noisy environment.
But if you are concerned about ANC headphones contributing to APD, here are some simple steps you can take that might help to reduce any potential repercussions.
1. Limit the use of the ANC. Use the active sound-blocking feature only when you really need it – perhaps if you need to focus on work in a noisy cafe, or if you're trying to sleep on a plane. While ANC has become an 'always-on' feature today, Mikael Herje of Harman International (JBL, Mark Levinson etc) recently told What Hi-Fi? that when ANC was first implemented it was purely "a situational feature and only used when ‘needed’”, so perhaps we should revert back to those days.
There is another good reason to avoid ANC when you don't really need it on, too. The extra processing of ANC can negatively impact sound quality when it isn't optimally implemented.
2. Use Transparency Mode (also known as Aware, Ambient, social mode and others), which most noise-cancelling headphones and earbuds feature these days. Contrary to ANC, this feature allows outside sounds in to your earcups/buds to keep you aware of your environment. Not only will it not seal you off in a bubble of silence, but it will also alert you to potentially dangerous sounds, like car horns or dogs barking. Worried about loud sounds bothering you too much or damaging your hearing? Apple's Adaptive Transparency mode reduces any outside sounds over 85dB.
3. Take special care if you're aged under 20. You might prefer the sound of silence over 90 per cent of what confronts you when you leave your front door – and who doesn't? But it would be prudent to expose your still-developing brain to a wide range of noises to help it make sense of them. You might not like what you hear. But you'll be learning how to dial those sounds down in order to focus on what's important.
MORE:
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Ask The Industry: Bose, Sennheiser and other headphone experts explain how active noise cancellation can hurt sound quality
