The BEST Noise Cancelling Earbuds of 2016

5 top selling noise cancelling earbuds compared

List of best noise cancelling earbuds of 2016 

Ever since the dawn of mp3 players, earbuds have become a mainstay of city wear. Whether it’s on the subway, on the bus, at the grocery store, or even just walking about town, zoned-out people sporting earbuds are everywhere.

The ubiquity of earbuds comes with its particular set of problems. Cities are noisy places, and noise can get in the way of enjoying your favourite tunes. Most people’s solution to this problem has been to reach for the volume knob. But exposure to loud noise can damage your hearing over time and, sadly, once it’s gone it’s gone.

This presents a bit of a conundrum. If the volume’s so low you can’t hear anything over the background noise, it’s kind of pointless isn’t it? But crank it up and you risk damaging your ears for good. Besides, I hate to break it to you (or no… um, maybe I don’t), but you’re not Radio Raheem. No-one wants to hear what you’re listening to (This holds especially true if it’s One Direction, but still, I’m sure you catch my drift).

Solution is noise cancelling earbuds.

What are noise cancelling earbuds?

So, let’s start with the basics.

Noise cancelling earbuds are earbuds that cancel out (see what I did there?) background noise. Most of them do this via a scientific phenomenon called phase cancellation.

I won’t bore you with a detailed explanation of how this works. In simple terms, noise cancelling earbuds pick up the sound waves created by ambient noise via small microphones and flip those waves by 180 degrees. When two identical sound waves are 180 degrees out of phase, they cancel each other out. Voilà, that pesky background noise is gone.

The point of all this is not to show you how clever I am (well, ok, maybe a little bit), but to clear the confusion that surrounds noise cancelling earbuds and what they do.

Which brings me to the next point.

Noise cancelling earbuds and noise isolating earbuds are not the same thing

Noise cancelling earbuds are often confused with noise isolating earbuds. The two terms are sometimes (wrongly) used interchangeably, and some manufacturers may even claim that their earbuds are noise cancelling when they are, in fact, noise isolating.

But noise cancelling earbuds and noise isolating earbuds are not the same thing. This is something you should be aware of, as you probably want to avoid shelling out the big bucks on a pair of earbuds you have the wrong impression of.

Of course, whether noise cancelling earbuds are better than noise isolating earbuds or not is beside the point here. The point is that noise cancelling earbuds have a mechanism which allows them to actively cancel out background noise via phase cancellation. Noise isolating earbuds, on the other hand, have no such components and simply block out background noise by physically sealing the ear canal.