Edit: they cheated, this isn't ANC and will never work as ANC. See below.

This sounds pretty fundamentally different from normal ANC. A common misconception is that ANC headphones "predict" the incoming noise and cancel it (and thus "they're good with constant noise but not sudden changes"). In reality they're just hybrid open-loop/closed-loop feedback systems. Specifically, the mic inside the cavity works with the speaker as a closed loop system to equalize the pressure inside in real time. This works for wavelengths smaller than the cavity size, give or take. So there is no prediction, and they don't care whether the noise is constant or not. They just have a given frequency response, and above a certain frequency all you have is passive muffling (no active cancellation).

But this can't do that, because the speakers are much further away from the user. So it had to predict to get any kind of decent frequency response. I wonder how they're doing that. A lot of noise sources are uncorrelated and not predictable...

Edit: They cheated. They're taking direct feeds from the source loudspeakers, and then all they have to do is track the transfer function to cancel that out from another speaker. This will never work in the real world, where sound sources are not coincident with your microphones (or lack thereof as in this case). Cool research, zero real world application as a true ANC system.

I have no idea why they're selling this as ANC. This looks more like a system for computing real time room/response calibration as the user moves around their head. That's valuable, in a completely different use case.

Always great to see development in this domain. IWAENC and Silentium come to mind as the forefront. I hope one day the researchers will realize that they are trying to cancel the wrong source. Instead of cancelling noise external to the human, the real breakthrough will be to cancel the human voice. This will confer privacy and other benefits in areas of increased population density. I would prefer a smartphone to have a feature like that than an incrementally snazzy camera, for example.

>wearing active noise canceling headphones for extended periods of time can be uncomfortable and even cause injury

Does anyone know what type(s) of injury is this referring to, how long is too long and how widespread/likely it is?

My new Ram 2500 diesel has active noise canceling and is the quietest ICE vehicle I’ve ever been in. Probably quieter than electric vehicles at high speeds.

I work in this area.

There's a huge runway in front of us for both products and technology.

'Acoustic Holography' has worked for some time, commercial implementations have been few and far between, mostly because what's in the market is already selling boatloads without it.

It'll come eventually, there are a few groups dedicated to it.

A successful anchor in that space will allow companies to go deeper into applications.

Acoustic room splitting, Silence on demand, etc.

I wonder if it is possible to mount a noise-cancelling device directly on the source of noise, for example, on a circular saw? The frequency of sound waves from a particular tool is pretty predictable and I can imagine a device with a mic or a vibrometer and speakers that clips directly to a tool and suppresses most of noise from this particular source.

I've been using ANC headphones since I started woodworking in the garage and it works for me but not for my neighbours. Soundproofing the garage is difficult and not always possible (not when the door is open anyway), so I would pay top dollar for something like this.

I expected them to be put elsewhere in the plane. For instance, my office has a floor with exposed AC units, and "noise-cancelling"[1] machines next to them that remove most of the sound of the AC. I wonder if something similar could be done for planes.

[1] Not sure exactly what the name of this device is.

I thought this was already in planes, such as Dash 8 (Q400) -- noise cancellation, although for the general cabin, not the individual seat passenger:

https://www.flightglobal.com/quiet-revolution/31793.article

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA446777.pdf (see plots at end)

"So they used a remote acoustic sensing system built around a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV), which measures non-contact vibrations over a wide range. In their tests, they placed a tiny, jewelry-sized, retro-reflective membrane in the ear as a pick-up for the LDV." These sound curious: these are the devices that three letter agencies have used to suss out sound from glass, aren't they?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Doppler_vibrometer "Security – Laser Doppler vibrometers (LDVs) as non-contact vibration sensors have an ability of remote voice acquisition"

I use a pair of bone conduction headphones and have some cheap earplugs. Better than any ANC headphone/earbud I’ve ever had at cancelling noise. You also don’t get that negative ear pressure or buzzing and they can be quite comfortable. I can be in the middle of a construction site or on a plane and not hear a thing. The one drawback is the sound quality but I’m not exactly an audiophile and tbh the newer bone conduction headphones sound fine to me.

I remember, years ago, a video on TED of a guy presenting working technology for generating sound using collapsing waves from multiple sources, so you can have sound limited to desired volume or cancel noise, so you could have silence next to a busy highway, etc. He was boasting high interest from military. His page/name and the video went offline soon after.

Gosh, if this makes it into airplanes and such I hope there will be a way to turn it off, I've not yet encountered an ANC headset that does not make me dizzy. Sure some sounds are reduced, but they give this strange "pressure" in my head, hard to explain, like being several meters under the water.

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Is this a heat engine? Feels like it has to be obeying the laws of thermodynamics and something has to get hot managing the pressure wave density in air. I'm guessing the speaker magnets and coils heat up.

Play enough noise, and the system will explode into fire...

I get 'vertigo' from ANC headphones. This sounds like my personal hell

To me, it seems pretty obvious this can't work. The cancelling signal from your seat will have to be cancelled by all the other seats and vice versa, creating a feedback loop.

Does anyone here already tried ANC on these new true wireless earbuds ? Does a better better isolation always imply to a better sound quality ?

ANC headphones are great for low-frequency (bass) sounds. But with cheap headphones I find I can still hear speech. I think new housing uses mass loaded vinyl to prevent high frequency sounds from passing through walls - perhaps heavy, 1lb or 1kg headphones with ANC are the solution for experiencing real silence in e.g. a busy workspace? Does anyone have an idea if material weight or density is a big factor in sound insulation? Along with air-tight sealing.