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Comment by sthomas1618 | Hacker News Reader

While its true that headphones are associated with hearing loss, there are lots of headphones out there that have noise-canceling capabilities without being excessively loud.

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Noise cancelling works great with cyclic sounds, such as an airplane engine. With acyclic sounds, such as conversations? They're rubish. No headphone in the market today can cancel out[1] a conversation with a method other than playing another sound high enough to cancel it.

[1] By cancel out, I mean make it impossible to understand the conversation, while the headphones are silent or playing in low volume.

I've got a pair of [1] in currently, no music, and they're doing a pretty good job of drowning out people talking at normal volume 6ft away. I'll admit they're doing a less good job of the strident conversation 10ft away and the plague of ringing phones but without music, I'm ok with that.

(NB. This reply entirely useless if you can't tolerate in-ear buds.)

[1] http://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones/ek5.html

Not all noise-canceling headphones are built alike. Its my understanding that it really depends on which ones you buy:

http://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/7213/do-nois...

In ear monitors are often a combination of ear plugs and headphones. Mine are rated at -30Db rather evenly across the spectrum. I have to take them off to effectively engage in conversation below shouting level even when the audio input is silent. On the other hand, they also are quite expensive. At any rate, if you do have effective noise cancellation it can be quite alarming when someone tries to interact with you by tapping your shoulder and such.

I was not totally clear. My comment was about active noise cancellation. Passive cancellation, such as what you get with protective gear or, as you say, studio monitors, has a nasty side effect I can't tolerate: suddenly, sounds transmitted through bone transmission are much louder (breathing and heartbeat mainly).

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