The Best Noise Cancelling Headphones | 2023

Ever since headphones were invented, people have wanted more out of them — more volume, more reliability, more fidelity, and finally more portability — as wireless sound has become more common. Lately, though, it’s all about what headphones can give you less of.

We’re talking about noise, of course. Thanks to noise-cancelling technology, it’s no longer enough for headphones to put out great sound. Headphones are now desirable because they can also detect and stop ambient sound from the world outside their speakers.

The feature has become so common that headphone makers boast about the different kinds of noise-cancelling technology they use. Some of them are proprietary and not all are created equal. To help you buy the best noise-cancelling products, it’s helpful to know how noise-canceling earbuds and headphones work.

The first method is called passive noise cancellation, and it’s used by any headphone set that covers your ear. Passive noise cancellation is simple: a physical barrier blocks out noise. This is of course a low-tech method, but it can be pretty effective depending on the materials used. Well-designed headphones can create a nice “cocoon” of silence just with the tight seal that the ear cushions make.

But that doesn’t always work in noisy settings, and that’s where active noise cancellation (ANC) comes in. Sound, of course, travels in waves, and the frequency of the waves determines the kind of sound you hear — high or low. Headphones with active noise-cancelling properties use an extra microphone to pick up the sound that’s heading for your ears from outside. Then they employ additional, dedicated speakers to produce a sound wave of their own. This wave is like an inverted mirror image of the original wave, countering its frequency with “peaks” with “valleys” of the same depth. This effectively cancels out the incoming noise so that what reaches your headphones is basically silence.

This “fight sound with sound” approach seems counterintuitive, but it can work extremely well. Of course, it all depends on how well the headphones can match that incoming sound. The frequency waves have to match up perfectly — otherwise, you’re just getting more noise.

The technology does tend to work best on consistent, low-frequency background noise — the kind of chatter you might hear in a busy office, for example, or the traffic outside a bus. High-end ANC headphones use complex algorithms that help the microphones decode those sound waves faster, allowing them to catch a wider frequency of noise. For obvious reasons, ANC works better on over-the-ear headphones than it does on earbuds, but the technology gets better every year.

When audiophiles get their first set of noise-cancelling headphones, it can be hard to imagine listening to music without them. Just keep in mind that it might not always be the best idea to have the feature on. It’s not hard to imagine situations where you might actually want to hear some of the things going on around you. Office workers might need to keep their ear out for a phone call, and it can be dangerous for joggers or bikers to get too “tuned out” from the surrounding traffic on busy roads.

That’s why the most important feature of noise-cancelling headphones might be the ability to turn it off. The latest ANC audio gear even gives you the ability to calibrate it, allowing in some louder sounds or those with a certain frequency. These can be worth the extra price if you’re going to be using them on busy streets.