settings you can adjust them to suit. That’s
important because everybody’s hearing is
different, especially as we age and lose some
of our ability to hear the highest frequencies.SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND
One of the best things about earbuds is also
one of the worst things: their tiny sizes and
lack of cables make them exceptionally easy
to misplace. That’s why many manufacturers
include the ability to trace lost earbuds from
an app. For example, if you can’t remember
where you put your AirPods Pro or Beats
Studio Buds you can use Apple’s Find My app
to locate them, or see their last known
location if they’re no longer active.TRANSPARENCY AND TALKTHROUGH
How to block ambient noise without missing anything important
Sometimes you don’t want to cancel all of the
noise around you: if you’re cancelling out the
hum of an open-plan office or the thrum of
city traffic, you may still want to hear your
colleagues or be aware of potential hazards.
While the names differ, most manufacturers
of active noise-cancelling headphones offer
modes that can cancel ambient noise while
still letting some sound through.
In order to let outside sounds in without
getting rid of noise cancelling altogether,
features such as Transparency Mode do
something slightly different from active noise
cancellation. Both features use external
microphones to listen to the sound around
you, but while ANC analyses the audio and
creates a reverse sound wave to cancel it out,
Transparency Mode doesn’t. Many report
that it feels more comfortable as a result:
ANC’s negative wave might not be audible,
but it creates that odd ‘vacuum’ feeling you
get with noise cancelling switched on.
With Transparency Mode the
microphones listen to the same sound, but
they then send it to your ears and adjust it to
help you hear what you want to hear. The
result is almost as if you aren’t wearing
earbuds at all, and it doesn’t give you the
same faintly unnatural feeling of pressure you
get with full active noise cancelling switched
on. In many cases you can adjust the strength
of the effect too, so you can dial down the
ambient noise if it’s still a little too loud for you.
One of the most useful applications of this
is when you can have a conversation with
others without removing your earbuds. Apple
calls it Live Listen and JBL calls it TalkThru,
but they’re both designed to help you hear anindividual without removing your buds. The
feature can also be really helpful for those
with hearing damage: instead of struggling to
hear someone over the hubbub of a busy
café or other public place, you can hear the
person you’re with much more clearly.
It’s important to note that as with active
noise cancelling, transparency mode
continues to operate whether or not you’re
listening to music, podcasts or audiobooks: if
your headphones are active and the feature
is enabled, the microphones are listening and
the processor is processing. While battery
life has improved dramatically in recent years
it’s still wise to ensure that everything is off
when you’re not actively listening; if you
don’t, you may find that when you do want
to listen to something there isn’t much
battery power left.that you can hear people in shops or in the
office without being bombarded with
ambient noise.
One of the most interesting features
we’re now seeing in all kinds of earbuds is
customised hearing profiles. Instead of
manually tweaking the EQ (if the
manufacturer’s app even lets you do that),
the headphones perform their own analysis
of your ear canal to find the perfect settings.
Different manufacturers do things slightly
differently but the HearID system in Anker’s
SoundCore earbuds is typical: it plays a
sound in your earbuds, analyses the
reflections of that sound, and tunes the
earbuds accordingly. If you don’t like the
The app you get depends on the earbuds
you buy. Sony’s earbuds, Google’s Pixel Buds
and Samsung earbuds use Google’s Find My
Device app, while Anker’s earbuds rely on
Anker’s own SoundCore app and JBL uses its
own My JBL app. While Apple’s Find My app
is open to other manufacturers, for now it’s
mainly an Apple-only service.
There’s one last thing to consider: fit.
Earbuds that don’t fit correctly won’t seal
your ears properly, and that’ll significantly
reduce their effectiveness and ability to
cancel ambient noise. Most earbuds come
with a range of tips to help you get the perfect
fit, but it’s worth doing some research to
find out if a particular pair of earbuds is
unusually large or small: for example the
Bowers & Wilkins PI7 earbuds deliver
spectacular sound but some reviewers have
found them simply too large for their ears.
If you can’t find noise-cancelling earbuds
that fit, there’s another option: custom
in-ear-monitors, IEMs for short, which are
moulded to your specific ear shape based on
measurements you provide or 3D scans of
your ears. They’re passive rather than active
noise cancelling but they’re very effective,
which is why you’ll see so many musicians
using them on stage or engineers wearing
them at the mixing desk. Products such as
Ultimate Ears’ UE Pro models aren’t cheap- prices start at $499 (just under £400) to
$2,199 (about £1,600) for the range-topping,
8-drivers UE Live – but they’re designed for
audio pros who need to hear every last detail
without the slightest distraction.
The very best active noise-cancelling
earbuds, however, can be bought for
considerably less than custom-fit IEMs.
48 T3 MARCH 2022
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