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Comment by davidmoffatt | Hacker News Reader

Yes I too would love to see this. Noise canceling headphone seem to cancel everything but voices and that is the opposite of what you need.

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My problem with noise canceling headphones is that while you can use them just for their ANC and have no music playing, it gets extra uncomfortable.

My brain can't handle feeling sound pressure on my ears from the ANC, but not hearing the noise because the ANC canceled it out. It gives me a really wicked headache.

I have to have something playing all the time I'm wearing the headphones, which is a problem because that can be a distraction in and of itself.

I use industrial ear muffs over my in-ear headphones. Not very comfortable but they work great.

Now I wish my work wouldn't suck so I could actually use all the focus I get this way :)

I’ve found that custom molded in-ear hearing protection combined with industrial ear muffs is the closest I can get to drowning out nearby conversations (including loud ones) without requiring a layer of music on top or bothering with headphones underneath the ear muffs.

I've been considering this as well, but it'll get really uncomfortable over the course of a day. And then you have the colleagues who think they can just interrupt you all the time, with minor questions. Or the ones who just hover around, waiting for you notice them.

Careful with this. I have tinnitus (arguably from 8 hours/day of headphone use), and when I doubled up as you described, my tinnitus became unbearable because it was the only thing I could hear and my brain "latched" on to it. I'm still trying to train my brain to stop listening...

My preferred setup is earplugs with headphones over them.

The headphones muffle outside noise to some degree and add music to drown out what they can't muffle. The earplugs create an end result of just muffled music, which is basically white noise if you pick the right type of songs.

The only downside is that earplugs can get uncomfortable after a long period of wearing them.

Yeah, there's absolutely no way I could wear in-ear headphones for 8+ hours straight.

I use some Sennheiser PXC450 over-the-ear NC headphones; they work pretty well for noise cancelling and provide decent noise isolation too.

The Beyerdynamic DT 770 are working great for this. I am using the DT 770 Pro and they are working fine for me. If you want more noise attenuation you can by the DT 770 M.

Link to the DT 770 Pro: https://north-america.beyerdynamic.com/catalog/product/view/...

Link to the DT 770 M: https://latin-america.beyerdynamic.com/dt-770-m.html

These are headphones for drummers, sound engineers and studios, so they sound good / great and are very comfortable.

Maybe they work better for you.

I bought Sennheiser HD 280 Pro for this reason. Am pretty happy with them so far (which is just a couple weeks).

I had a pair of QC25s and while they were nice, they did the worst at blocking out the noise I most wanted to block out.

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