Basically, people in office environments get used to "yapping" for a whole lot of reasons not related to any actual need to exchange information (to vent and shoot the shit, basically) and to do so in rollicking, loud "party" voices without any regard to the downsides. Meanwhile, all it takes is a bit of introspection to realize that about 80% of this noise is just that. And a little bit of discipline to institute a culture of (relative) quiet and solitude -- even in an open plan office.
What, you say -- no time for introspection? No interest in discipline? No way to even bring up the idea of "library voices" in your culture?
Then your problems are much bigger than can what be helped by any advanced technology.
In the mean time, get some nice headphones. I second the recommendation of the HD-280s; they're great. Note that over-the-ear headphones come in both open-ear and closed-ear varieties; the former don't provide any isolation (they're designed to let you keep your situational awareness, which is often desirable).
If I don't want the distraction of music, but still need to wipe out the sound of people talking nearby, I fire up https://rain.simplynoise.com/.
The simplenoise.com site is great. Thanks
http://mynoise.net was great, and I only had a $10 pair of in-ear earbuds. I haven't used the site since changing jobs, but I remember liking Rain On A Tent, Wooden Chimes, and mumbly-voice environments like Laundromat and Airport Terminal.
A set of one of those will probably do the job of lessening voices to something acceptable--they do to the point that my very, very distractable self can work in an open office, whereas older NC headphones did not--but they won't completely remove it.
If you really want that, I'd suggest a set of 34dB+ reduction earplugs. If that doesn't work, put them underneath NC over-ear headphones. If that doesn't work, play white noise on the headphones. I'll be surprised if you heard anything external after that.
(Note that you'll have to be listening to some sort of sound for them to be maximally effective; simply turning on the noise cancellation without playing music or some other sound through them reduces the noise, but not by as much)
I was actually thinking of wearing earplugs and headphones at once. Thanks for the info
After having gone through a number of pretty expensive NC headphones, I can say confidently that up until now nothing matched late-model Bose for NC specifically (music sound quality is another discussion). Parrot came closest, but everything else was way behind and really only blocked airplane/subway/bus-type loud hum, nothing more random or higher-pitched.
However, the initial reviews for the 1000X have all been pretty adamant that the 1000X matches and possibly beats the QC35 for NC. That's an amazing accomplishment for Sony, no lie.
At any rate, you're welcome. I have really bad noise sensitivities that make productivity hard in shared spaces, so your question is near and dear to my heart.
https://www.cvs.com/shop/personal-care/ear-care/ear-plugs/cv...
Not doing it since I changed jobs and work remote.