Best headphones companies make their effort to create better noise cancelling and ambient sound mode on their headphone.
In this new era, headphones or earphones with noise cancelling ambient sound features make our lives easier and shift our user experience to the next level.
Having both features together is excellent, but if you need to choose one from noise cancelling vs ambient sound, which one should you choose?
There is no comparison between these two as they are totally different from each other. One is reducing noise to make your listening more focus, and another one boosts the ambient noise surrounding you. Let’s discuss more to understand what is much preferable to you.
What is Noise cancelling
Noise cancelling can be divided into two types. One is Passive noise cancelation another one is ANC which stands for active noise cancelation. As the name suggests it reduce the surrounding noise to make your music listening experience better.
Suppose you are in a bus or on an airplane, you will barely listen to your music vocal, but most of the other elements like bass, treble, highs, mid, and lows will be missed because of the engine noise.
On the other hand, suppose you are in the middle of a market or rackety restaurant, and now you have to make a phone call. You hardly hear anything from the person you are talking right?
So, in this case, a headphone with noise cancelling features will help you out from it.
Now you know when you need it, but did you wonder how it actually works? The active noise cancelling mechanism is quite different and complicated from passive noise cancellation, which makes it expensive. Let’s discuss how they work.
1. Active Noise Cancellation
Basically, headphones with active noise cancelation have two microphones on them. One is for receiving your speech while calling, and another is for receiving noises surrounding you.
The secondary microphone receives the noise, and the processor of the headphone erases the higher or lower-frequency sound waves of noise by creating its own reverse sound wave which reduces the coming noise continuously.
So the music you are hearing from it is a heavily processed one that makes your experience outstanding.
2. Passive Noise Cancellation
It’s a cheaper way to reduce noise. Most of the headphones nowadays come with this structure. Basically, in passive noise cancellation, there will be an ear tip on the headphone’s earpiece that will block your ear’s inner surface to reduce noise beside you.
Though it is not working that much effectively like ANC do, but it can still reduce the noise by blocking the wave especially higher frequency wave.
What is Ambient Sound
Ambient sound is just the background noise surrounding you. By enabling Ambient sound mode, you will be able to hear the ambient noise beside you in a way that your music will still be clear enough.
It helps you to notice your surrounding so that if anything important happens near you, you can attend or give attention to it immediately.
With this feature, you will not lost yourself in the music rather you will be able to enjoy the music safely by observing your surroundings.
For example, suppose you are walking, jogging, or cycling outside. In this situation, the ambient sound mode will help you enjoy music and notice traffic together.
On the other hand, suppose you are doing housework like cleaning or cooking now you want to listen to music. Just turn the ambient mode on and hear whatever you want still you can sense what is happening near you, especially if you have children near you.
Sometimes, allowing ambient sound near you can be enjoyable, especially during rain or on a beach, the sea wave sounds or in a park where birds are making noise. It will help you to feel the music mix with your surroundings.
But remember, it only boost the ambient noise not all kind of noise. So if you are in heavy traffic or into something where paying attention is important, please skip listening to music though the ambient mode is on, as it can be extremely dangerous.
How Ambient Sound Mode Work
Like ANC, headphones with ambient mode also have another secondary microphone which allows it to receive the ambient sound frequency, but in spite of reducing it, the processor of the headphone processed the wave in a way where you can only hear the ambient noise surrounding you.
It does not require heavy processing, but it still needs continuous processing like ANC. So in most of the cases ambient sound featured enable headphones also have ANC mode too.
Noise Cancelling vs Ambient Sound Which One is Better
Both features are better in different circumstances. As I discussed earlier, in a noisy place where you want to skip everything surrounding you or focus on the music only, there is no other better option except noise cancelling mode.
On the other hand, when everything surrounding is essential to notice, and you need to listen to the music with clarity, the ambient sound mode should be on.
Besides that, particularly natural sounds like sea waves, waterfall, rain, forest, campfire, wind, and birds can make your music experience better with ambient mode on.
Which One to Pick Between Noise Cancelling and Ambient Sound
If you are traveling by bus, train, or something with noisy engine sound or in the middle of a crowded place and want to skip your surroundings, just pick the noise cancelling mode. It also helps to focus on every aspect of the music.
And if you feel the surrounding is important to notice or want to listen to the music with the natural feeling, just pick the ambient sound.
Final Words
In this new stage of technology, everything gets updated day by day and flawlessly, the headphones also improve with the best feature.
Noise cancelling sound and ambient sound systems created a revolutionary change in the musical world. After all of the discussion, you should know what to pick and when to choose between Noise Cancelling vs Ambient Sound.
Remember using noise cancelation, especially the ANC, can cause serious incidents if you start using it everywhere. You can use it on the rest time when you don’t have anything to do is the perfect time to choose noise cancelling.
But if you are more or less a nature lover and you don’t want to skip your surrounding without any hesitation go for ambient sound mode.
All of the discussions will help you choose among these two, but you need to decide which one you should pick.
