Open-ear noise canceling earbuds / IEMs: contradiction in terms?

[Florin Andrei]

I'm a long-time user of all kinds of audio technology, including things that produce and process sound.

For work, I wear noise-canceling headphones or IEMs, to help me be less distracted by ambient noise (I don't do audio these days anymore). That means I wear these devices all day, every (work) day. Eventually, no matter how "comfortable" initially, each device becomes a bit annoying. Headphones eventually create pressure points (and those that don't are not good at noise canceling). IEMs / earbuds irritate the ear canal. This only happens after a long time of every day usage, but it always happens in the end.

I've tried swapping two devices on alternate days. That helps somewhat, but it does not solve the root cause.

I'm not interested in "try this awesome make/model, it's super-duper comfortable" type of advice. I've tried many, many models. I've tried all of the top noise-canceling models. I own many headphones and IEMs - I stopped doing the census after device #20 or so.

Open-ear buds are a new technology. In some cases, I've seen claims that they offer noise canceling. This may seem like a contradiction in terms. I'm sure they could reduce ambient noise somewhat, even when they don't actually close the ear canal. The question is - how good the reduction is.

If it works reasonably well, this could be the solution to my problem.

Thoughts?

 

[staticV3]

From open-ear earbuds, do not expect noise cancelling even half as effective as conventional solutions.

Instead, I would recommend you try memory foam ear plugs which automatically conform to the shape of your ear canals, or CIEMs/custom ear tips molded to the shape of your ear canals.

For the latter, you will have to visit a local acoustician.

 

[timer1992]

The ANC effect of OWS is very poor, only about 10dB or so, basically can be ignored, Perhaps what you should consider are industrial noise-isolating earmuffs.

 

[Florin Andrei]

The ANC effect of OWS is very poor, only about 10dB or so, basically can be ignored

That's what I was thinking - but I was hoping my knowledge was outdated.

Perhaps what you should consider are industrial noise-isolating earmuffs.

lol

If I could also listen to music, softly, while wearing those, then I would definitely consider them.

Actually, nevermind, I think they would create pressure points, in the long run, just like ANC headphones.

 

[capslock]

Well, Apple just came out with open NC in ears. From what I've read, it seams to be working pretty well but not quite like closed models. They seem to be doing an inane amount of signal processing to deal with the changing gap between the earpiece and the ear canal. Mind you, they don't support any of the high bitrate / near lossless BT codecs.

‘We’ve got to make it happen’: How Apple designed AirPods 4 for effective ANC

The work that began with EarPods continues to pay off as Apple prepares to ship the noise-canceling AirPods 4.

www.engadget.com

 

[Florin Andrei]

The AirPods 4. Yeah, I just tested them today at the local Apple store. The noise profile of the store is similar to a noisy office floor.

The ANC is amazingly good for an open device. I definitely did not expect it to perform this good. Mind you, it's not as good as a top ANC device with a sealed design. But it reduces pretty well everything except for the high frequencies (where ANC would not work anyway and you'd have to rely on passive reduction via sealing the ear canal). It's really just the sibilant part of the noise from the human voices that was not reduced very much. Everything else got pushed down significantly.

I have the AirPods Max, the Sony WH-1000XM4 and WF-1000XM5, and the Master & Dynamic MW09. I've tested the Sony WH-1000XM5 and the latest Bose full size ANC top model and I know how they perform. All of these are better at ANC than the AirPods 4. Maybe the WF-1000XM5 and the MW09 are somewhat close, but I could not do an A/B test to be sure.

If the AirPods 4 had true multipoint Bluetooth (not just when paired with Apple devices), I would have bought them today. I'm still kind of considering them. I could not care less about fancy codecs.

 

[capslock]

Makes sense that they wouldn't work well in treble. How high do they stop working? I can imagine hearing the multitude of clicks and bangs people make in an office being bothersome when not masked by everything else.

I have the XM4, and while their NC is good, apparently, while using them on an iphone in a car, it is impossible to understand me. The simple open cablebound headsets are good in terms of intelligibilty. I got myself some Airpods Pro 2 to have both NC for me and intelibility for everyone else. How to the XM5 fare as headsets?

 

[nanook]

"Open-ear buds are a new technology. In some cases, I've seen claims that they offer noise canceling. This may seem like a contradiction in terms."

I don't think this is impossible. I'm using the Google buds pro and the weird thing (at first glance) is, that they sound best and noise cancelling works best when they are just about to fall out. This is nasty, but they wear very comfortably.
I started to push them deeper into the ear canal and I thought they were broken - no bass, dull sound and almost no noise cancelling. Took me a while searching the Internet until I came across the information that they should not be worn like IEMs (pushed deep into the ear).

With this experience in mind, I can imagine, that good NC is possible without actually acoustically blocking the ear canal with a tight seal.

 

[Florin Andrei]

Makes sense that they wouldn't work well in treble. How high do they stop working?

Some graph I've seen a few days ago (can't remember where) indicated their ANC goes as high as 3 kHz, which seems typical. But they don't have passive isolation from sealing the ear canal, so they don't do any NR above that frequency.

I have the XM4, and while their NC is good, apparently, while using them on an iphone in a car, it is impossible to understand me. The simple open cablebound headsets are good in terms of intelligibilty. I got myself some Airpods Pro 2 to have both NC for me and intelibility for everyone else. How to the XM5 fare as headsets?

While at my desk, I always use the microphones on the MacBook Pro, which are very good, so microphone quality was never an issue for me. In the car, I just use the car audio system for calls.

You can generally get a decent idea of the sound quality of your voice in a call if you install Zoom and use the microphone test feature in the Audio tab in Settings.