1243Ambient Noisehad 110 decibels in the cockpit,” says Rutan. The
risk of permanent hearing damage increases at
noise levels of 75 decibels and greater when you’re
exposed to it 24 hours a day, as the Voyager pilots
would be. In August 1986, the two Bose engineers
showed up unannounced at Rutan’s door, and gave
a demonstration of the noise-canceling tech. They
got the go-ahead and started work on prototypes.
With Bose’s headphones shielding their ears, Rutan
and Yeager made their nine-day, nonstop f light that
December.
“That got a bunch of attention,” says Gauger.
“Within a month or so we found our first market:
general aviation.” Bose started manufacturing its
Aviation Headset Series 1 in 1989, the first com-
mercially available noise-canceling headphones for
private pilots. But it wasn’t until they patented Tri-
Port technology, which allowed for smaller, lighter,
more comfortable earcups, that Bose brought the
tech to consumers with the first QuietComfort line
in 2000. TriPort, Gauger says, is a way of efficiently
using earcup volume by carefully plac-
ing holes behind the speaker inside
the headphone to help generate more
low-frequency sound, while still leav-
ing plenty of room for passive blocking
of high frequencies.
In the last 20 years, Bose’s head-
phones have advanced with the times.
The company brought noise cancel-
lation to the earbud format with the
QuietComfort 20 in 2013. And as
of 2018, Bose had 44 percent of the
noise-canceling headphone mar-
ket. But other brands like Sony and
Apple are driving their own innova-
tion. Consumer electronics analyst
Ben Arnold of the NPD Group, a mar-
ket analytics company, finds adaptive
noise-canceling to be one of the most
exciting developments. “You can
block out different frequencies of
sound while letting others in,” he says.
“That’s a big evolutionary step.”
What’s more, Brett Molesworth of
the University of New South Wales
School of Aviation led studies in
2013 and 2014, finding that noise-
canceling headphones reduced
communication errors and improved
task performance in aviation settings.
But the benefits of noise canceling have been real-
ized beyond when you’re just listening to music or
piloting a plane. The tech has also become a boon
for employees in open-concept offices. A 2018 sur-
vey commissioned by streaming service Cloud Cover
Music found that about two-thirds of workers feel
that wearing headphones increased their perceived
productivity, and 30 percent used them solely to
tune out ambient noise. And research led by Sun Yat-
sen University’s Maojin Liang in 2012 found that
noise-canceling headphones may prevent hearing
damage caused by listening to loud music over back-
ground subway and street noise.
Remote work has made the headphones even
more useful. “Everybody’s working from home,”
says Arnold. “You’ve got multiple workers and kids
learning. That’s another place where the technology
can prove itself.”
“Our ears are as important for engaging with the
world as our eyes,” says Gauger. “But you can’t squint
your ears. Headphones can let you do that.”HOW NOISE CANCELLATION WORKS
1 REFERENCE
MICROPHONE /
Positioned on the
outside of the ear-
cup or bud, this
mic analyzes all
frequencies of
ambient sound
and routes
them to the cir-
cuitry inside the
headphones.2 NOISE-
CANCELING
CIRCUITRY / A
summing ampli-
fier in the earcup
receives the refer-
ence mic info and
calculates the fre-
quencies opposite
to (180 degrees
out of phase with)
the outside noise.3 SPEAKER /
Receiving data
from the circuitry,
the speaker emits
the opposite-
phase frequency
(alongside your
music) to nullify
the ambient noise.
With the music off,
only muffled noise
hits your ears.4 ERROR
MICROPHONE /
Positioned near
the ear canal,
this constantly
monitors signal-
to-noise ratio
entering the ear
and relays the
info back to the
circuitry for neces-
sary adjustments. ILLUSTRATIONCREATED^ BY^ ELENI^DIMOUUSINGGETTY^ IMAGES^ (EAR)72 September/October 2020
This Changed
(^13) Everything