Noise Cancelling Headphones

Lots of people, autistic or not, use them so, in most settings, headphone wearers will blend in. Sometimes it's not safe to wear them of course e.g. for road safety.

Noise cancelling headphones really work. But they make me look a bit strange from the outside. My family is not in favor of me using them...

good sound FTW!

Here is a link to the organisation who appears to have carried out the research. I can’t find details of this on their website, Tox Free. The article about this in a related company Kemindo is sketchy in detail and they don’t show how they reached their conclusions.

https://toxfreeproject.eu

https://kemindogroup.com/news/technology-2026-feb-18-hazardous-substances-headphones

I've just read an article in todays Guardian about headphones and the harmful chemicals the contain, cancer causing, female hormone mimics, that can cause feminisation in males and effect neurodevelopment. This a cross all the brands tested.

Really pleased you have got a good result there, Andy Neniu 

Well, I went with the Audio-Technica NC earbuds and I'm really pleased. They arrived this morning (I only ordered them yesterday) and they're doing a good job of calming my nerves. I think I've been having a bit of a burnout episode over the last few days - noises sound uncomfortable and I need to sleep lots, and I've turned the brightness on my monitors down a lot. The earbuds are doing a good job of filtering out background noise. My wife is watching something on the computer and I can't tell what it is, can't even hear the adverts when they ramp up volume unnecessarily! I've got active noise cancelling set to full, and there's a forest soundscape which is helping mask out a lot of noise too. I live in quite a wooded area with lots of trees visible from our flat, so this is ideal. There are a few different soundscapes that you can have playing in the background, or none at all. They don't filter out everything, but they're making thing an awful lot better. I can't hear the washing machine that I've just put on and our kitchen tap doesn't sound painful to my ear when I was just running it.

I love my noise cancelling headphones (Sony WH-1000XM5) and sometmes switch to industrial ear defenders (3M Peltor XA5) for even less sound. Both are over-ear headband-style (which I prefer as I don't like things in my ears) but I know preferences vary! Both have been gamechangers at work and at home.

Not at all they are tech free. They just reduce the decibel level enough to hear conversation in front of you and to lessen the exterior noise. E.g. I went to a garden centre café with my folks and without my earbuds I wouldn't have even been able to walk into the garden centre, let alone the café. I like the little hard shell carry case you can attach the rubber loop to any set of keys. One bonus of hiding in the café was the café owners daughter also has autism he came to chat to my dad and then gave me a wedge of a lemon curd pie. The power of the buds with absolutely no power lol

Oh, and last one - if you do go the iem route there are companies out there that make tips custom moulded to your ears which will block out even more and quite likely be more comfortable.  

So active noise cancelling isn't something I've done a lot of research into, but what I can say is that with a good seal I get more dB reduction from my iems when using the right tips (which, for my ears are dunu SS in large - messing with multipacks of tips for me there!) than I do from noise reducing ear plugs. It's a hard estimate, but I'm guessing somewhere between 30 and 40db.

I guess for your needs Bluetooth is going to be better than wired (you can hotswap cables now for most items), so I guess what I'm probably saying is have a look into tips and get the best seal, and have a look at how much reduction you will get with active cancelling, since passive and good tips might be very similar.

And yeah, AT make some nice stuff but for in ears, whether Bluetooth or not, you might find similar/better quality for quite a bit less outlay. There's some I credible sounding stuff out there now for not much money at all - crazy how far it's come. 

Thanks for the reply! I'm usually a wired headphones type as well. I had thought about IEMs (that's In Ear Monitors for anyone else reading who's not familiar with sound engineering!), but I specifically want something with active noise cancellation. I can always put headphones on and listen to music to cover up unwanted sounds but sometimes I just want things to be quieter. If I'm in that sort of mood I probably wouldn't even bother bluetooth pairing them with anything, just let them work their magic. I'm not a great fan of bluetooth as a rule, I find the signal drop-outs distracting.

No experience of the audio technica but what I can say, after going down a bit of a hyperfocus rabbit-hole is that there are some truly stunning iem's coming out of China these days (chi-fi is a thing!) - well worth doing a bit of reading as iem's, whether active noise cancelling or not, with the right tips reduce background noise massively.  

I'm a wired kind of guy when it comes to iems/headphones, so other than to say they make Bluetooth receivers that fit any iem these days, I cant really recommend any Bluetooth built in devices. 

But yeah, getting a decent pair of iems doesn't need to cost 150 dollars these days (you can get _incredible_ sounding ones at that price), and really getting the right tips to provide a good inner ear seal is going to give you a solid level of passive noise cancelling. 

If you want wired recommends let me know your budget - home studio here too btw; I wouldn't class myself as an audiophile but I appreciate good sound. 

I've been looking at getting a pair of the Audio-Technica ATH-CKS50TW Hybrid Noise-Cancelling earbuds (you can find them here: https://www.audio-technica.com/en-gb/headphones/type/noise-cancelling/ath-cks50tw2). 

Does anyone have any experience of them?

My favourite non-NC headphones are my Audio-Technica ones which I use in my home studio, so I thought it might make sense to try them. I'm trying not to buy US goods at the moment, mainly because I don't like what Trump is doing to the country and Audio-Technica are under a Japanese parent company.

Like you, I have found that noise cancelling headphones or earbuds are the best thing, although they wouldn’t be comfortable for sleeping in unless I slept on my back and didn’t move. My bedroom is normally very quiet so it’s not usually a problem. 

i didn’t enjoy using ear defenders as my heartbeat unsettled me and they made me feel strange.

Do you need something like a smart phone to use these? It's other peoples noises and conversations that I don't want to hear and yet every noise cancelling headphones seem to allow the human voice, I'd like to be able to hear the birds singing, not the neighbours kids screeming, but I know thats not going to happen. I find it really hard to tune out other peoples conversations.

I just bought alpine silence earbuds. You can still hear conversations close by, but much less of the other noises that we just can’t turn our brains off to. 

Huge fan of noise cancelling headphones over here. For ages I was using a pair of low profile ear defenders but then the sound of my own heartbeat, while reassuring, became a distraction in its own right. I also have a pair of heavy duty defenders. Noise cancelling headphones are a game changer. I wear mine every change I get, and even have a pair that I leave at work, an ear bud variety, and a fancy pair for at home. My wife has a headband version that she sleeps in, whereas I use earplugs at night. She likes the ambient background. I recently purchased a pair of Loop, and so far I'm not seeing much of difference between those and my cheap bedtime earplugs. I have a colleague who slurps their tea like a demon, and were it not for the noise cancelling headphones I'd probably serving a custodial sentence by now. 

Thanks TheCatWoman , he hasn't been to the GP as he isn't currently too bad -it's mainly if he's on his back and he's ill or had a cider -he doesn't drink much, only occasionally when socialising (online). When he does, I don't hesitate to nudge him over on his side and it stops. I'll make him see the doc if it gets worse though!

The other side is him staying up late if I've gone to bed, as I'm such a light sleeper he was always waking me up. This is when earplugs are really handy, as I can wear them and he doesn't wake me up!

Has your husband tried snore strips? Or even been to the GP, snoring can be due to all sorts of things, allergies, problems with the nasal passages, being overweight or the wrong sleeping position.

Snoring is one of the reasons I sleep alone, I can't stand it and have to either move to another room before I do something drastic like smother them with thier own pillow