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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

The company I'm currently working at bought everyone some top-of-the-line Bose noise-canceling headphones for the same reason, as we have an open plan office and coworkers can be chatty sometimes. And while the noise canceling is far from being perfect, it really makes it much easier to stay focused when working. I even wear them on my commute now as they are very good at filtering out constant amplitude white noise (such as engine hums), which helps me to focus on my reading. Unfortunately I sometimes miss my stops now :D

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Not sure if you've heard of this nifty-as-hell device, but a company called Doppler Labs made Here and is now taking preorders for Here One.

Essentially little wireless earbuds that take this whole noise-cancelling thing to a whole new level. I have the first ones and they're pretty remarkable, already preordered the new ones which extend well beyond simple novelty.

You can turn down engine hum, but keep voices/stop announcements at full volume. The new ones apparently also let you layer in music from your phone, which was the obvious feature ommission from the first version. Allegedly the new one they're also playing with directional filtering, live language translation (?!), ML-based baby/siren/annoying coworker cancelling, and tons of other stuff. I haven't been this excited about a technology for years, as you might be able to tell :)

https://hereplus.me

I bought some QC25s when I moved to a big open office. For me, they don't help -- what they do is they kill all the background noise, but then the individual voices still come through and they come through as the only thing I hear.

I could play music, but sometimes I like the roar of silence.

I'd like to buy a nice pair of headphones but that's the thing that worries me. I'm not at all bothered by the background noise (e.g. aircraft engines) but human-made noises are very distracting. There seems to be nothing that can filter them out; my current passive headphones will muffle conversation a bit when I've got white noise playing through them but throat-clearing cuts right through.

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