Hacker News Reader

Comment by vanattab | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence that anc headphones are bad for your ears? I also feel odd presure in my ears when using them. I know they are supposed to cancel out the wave form but I was curious if latency,timing etc could lead to high frequency and in audible but still damaging presure on ear drum? I have no evidence for this other then discomfort using anc and suffering from tinnitus after using anc

View on HN

Sennheiser has a bit less pressure than the other brands like Bose, but of course it does still has some.

When listening to music, I keep the volume as low as feasible, and I disable ANC. When listening to podcasts, I enable ANC.

In general, in music apps, the volume is already too boosted, and so even the minimum volume is too high and damaging. This is not an issue in podcast apps like AntennaPod.

There actually is evidence that ANC music makes it hard for people to understand what others are saying in the real world. If this effect starts to happen, reverse course immediately before it becomes permanent.

I really dislike using ANC because of that feeling of pressure on my ears, and the increased battery usage. Annoyingly, my main headphones (Bose QC 35 II) default to it being on at power-on, and the app doesn't let you turn that off, only reassign the action button to toggle between high, low and off, so every time I turn them on I have to click it twice

As I (not a doctor) understand it, the lack of low frequency noise, which the ANC headphones cut out, tricks your ear into thinking that it’s blocked and the pressure is wrong. There is no actual pressure issue, but that signal gets sent to the brain because of the sudden lack of low frequency noise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com