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Comment by jraby3 | Hacker News Reader

Aren’t in ear headphones with noise cancellation better than not using them and instead raising the volume to overcome background noise?

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If the “sound” is an internal perception, then noise cancelling headphones would not help at all. They might make it worse by quieting any background sounds that could otherwise help cover up the internally produced sensations.

It depends on your tinnitus itself. My tinnitus gets crowded out by a loud environment, I don't tend to hear it. I only hear my tinnitus when there's no sound. So for me, noise-cancelling headphones do give some temporary symptom relief.

Wearing a Bose QC 35 is so important for me when I go to sleep, because the ANC also blocks out sound and blocks out my tinnitus to some extend. It's a bit of a skill to sleep with them (you can get audio feedback of the ANC mics) but I've mastered it and improved my sleep game a lot because of it.

But active noise cancellation removes (perceived) sound. Wouldn't that make it worse, then?

The way I experience it is as follows.

Normally:

- Tinnitus: 100%

With ANC:

- Tinnitus: 50%

- Bose ANC: 50%

I like the ANC sound more than my tinnitus.

I haven't noticed my tinnitus becoming worse or less worse.

Oh, by “the ANC sound”, do you mean the white noise floor of the ANC?

In that case, have you tried something like the Bose Sleepbuds? Same idea, much more comfortable to sleep with.

Bose recently retired their 2nd attempt. The team behind those have a new one coming out in January, https://ozlosleep.com I'm pretty interested... hard to tell how long the pre-sale discount lasts

It doesn't seem to have ANC, so it doesn't noise cancel, it only masks. And if ANC is the same as masking then they'd need to put that in their marketing.

Also: yep, that's what I mean by it, the white noise sound.

My tinnitus gets worse afterwards if I'm subjected to noise (as in an airplane). Noice-cancelling headphones is a must for me at this point if I'm to experience prolonged increased sound levels.

My experience is that noise cancellation (and transparency mode) in the AirPod max made my tinnitus much worse over time. Got rid of them. I recovered somewhat from whatever they did to me but not fully.

I had tinnitus from loud music for 20+ years prior to that and was always very careful with sound levels because it sucks.

A friend of mine similarly reported that the in ear Apple headphones caused temporary tinnitus when in noise cancellation mode (including transparency mode) but not when those features were off.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35023808

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