Joyce Cohen on hearing protection beyond earplugs. I often wear noise-cancelling headphones on BART; now I will wear them more often. Does the New York subway damage hearing?
Joyce Cohen on hearing protection beyond earplugs. I often wear noise-cancelling headphones on BART; now I will wear them more often. Does the New York subway damage hearing?
I prefer my Etymotic isolation earbuds to the noise-cancelling headphones. Smaller, cheaper, and I think they sound better. Some people don’t like things in their ears, however.
I wonder how much hearing gets damaged on airplanes. The small jets are really loud if you’re sitting in the back. Fortunately at least some airlines are now letting people keep earbuds in (unplugged) during takeoff and landing, when it’s loudest.
While noise cancelling headphones would help you feel more at peace by reducing the variation in noise, wouldn’t they still hurt your physical hearing since the overall decible level is actually higher? I thought noise cancellation works by adding more noise so a 60 decible noise becomes unnoticable but you get that effect by adding 20dbs of cancelling noise.
I guess if the goal is to make the world quieter in the long term even when you’re not wearning noise cancelling headsets, it’s working