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After writing in-depth about noise canceling for several years, I thought I knew most of what there was to know about it. But at this week’s 2019 Audio Engineering Society International Conference on Headphone Technology in San Francisco, I saw two presentations that changed my thinking about noise-canceling technology in headphones -- and proposed ways to improve the technology and our methods of evaluating it.

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Running measurements of speakers and headphones on a regular basis teaches you many things about audio that you’d probably never otherwise learn, but it has a side benefit I haven’t seen discussed: it lets you monitor your hearing. The tests, which involve tones played through the devices under test, typically start at the high frequencies and run down to the low frequencies, and as your hearing degrades with age, you see more and more numbers tick away on the display before you can start to hear the tones.

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It never fails. Write an article about noise-canceling headphones for a mainstream publication, as my colleague Geoff Morrison did for The New York Times, and you’ll hear from readers about a variety of “hacks” for doing noise-canceling with better fidelity and/or for less money and/or to eliminate the dreaded phenomenon of eardrum suck. The most common suggestion is to use earplugs in conjunction with standard passive headphones. Others suggest using high-quality earphones and putting noise-canceling (or passive) headphones over them.

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Binaural recordings -- which use microphones placed inside simulated ears on a dummy head -- produce an uncannily realistic sense of space when heard through headphones. But because binaural recordings tend to sound only so-so when heard through speakers, most record labels and engineers don’t release them. For the last couple of years, Chesky Records has produced almost all of its recordings in the Binaural+ format, and I use them in all of my headphone reviews. So when I recently got a press release from Chesky touting Jazz, the latest release from bassist/singer Casey Abrams, recorded “using our new recording methodology which features a stereo ribbon microphone,” I worried that this golden era of binaural recording was over.

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I got a surprising phone call a couple of weeks ago from a fellow audio writer working on an earphone review. He doesn’t review a lot of headphones or earphones, and didn’t know what to make of the latest review sample he’d received. “They have no bass at all. None. I don’t get it,” he said. I happen to have discussed this issue a few years ago with the manufacturer of these earphones, who told me, “I have a lot of customers who want that sound.” I’ve battled online with a few of them, who insist that headphones and earphones with elevated treble have more detail. I advised my colleague to write one of those “If this is the kind of thing you like, you’ll like this” reviews for which the old Stereo Review was notorious.

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It’s clear that the listening habits of headphone enthusiasts are changing. Recently, HiFiMan launched the Ananda BT headphones -- a Bluetooth version of its Ananda planar-magnetic headphones -- which, at $1199 USD, are arguably the first true audiophile-grade Bluetooth headphones. Clearly, there must be some interest even among hardcore headphone enthusiasts for playing music -- or whatever -- from smartphones.

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Doug Schneider 11 days ago Audeze LCD-5 Headphones
@HelloguyHello. As most regular readers know, Brent Butterworth left for a full-time stint at Wirecutter ...
u want to tune out the world around you for travel, the office, or at ...
Helloguy 22 days ago Audeze LCD-5 Headphones
Hello there's no link to the headphone measurement in this review and I don't find ...
@Brent ButterworthThanks both for your replies.. after tapping the post button a piece of my post ...
Brent Butterworth 27 days ago Beyerdynamic T5 (3rd Generation) Headphones
@Doug SchneiderYeah, and I moved toward the end of the pandemic and never was able to ...
When I hear music using MDR-7506, I tend to be more analytical then enjoying the ...
Doug Schneider 27 days ago Beyerdynamic T5 (3rd Generation) Headphones
@MauroI'll perhaps talk to Brent and see if he can answer. But as we know, ...
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Hi guys, after COVID restrictions it was not possible for Brent to have a listening ...
Doug Schneider 29 days ago Shure Aonic 5 Earphones
@Ed GeeInteresting that you bring up Shure. Early one in my earphone purchases, I had Etymotics ...