Noise-canceling headphones are not the same as noise-canceling headphones. Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones are best classified as noise-canceling headphones because they don’t use electronic components to actively cancel out ambient noise. Instead, Direct Sound headphones physically block sound by bouncing sound off your ears, while covering them with proprietary ear pads that isolate sound. The result is better sound insulation and superior sound quality for your music.

Why noise canceling headphones sound better

Most Noise cancelling headphones use electronic devices that “listen” to the sound around them to generate an “opposite” sound wave to suppress the sound within the ear pads. This is called active noise cancellation because the headphones actively cancel incoming sound by using a canceling sound wave. For audiophiles like us, the main problem with this type of noise cancellation is that the “cancellation” sound wave, which is designed to block out ambient noise, also destroys the music that you are actually trying to listen to. It is simply impossible to avoid this. Take a simple audio frequency as an example. Suppose you are surrounded by 1000 Hz ambient noise. In this way, your active noise canceling headphones create a sound wave that blocks that frequency within your ear cushions. But what if the music you are listening to has 1000Hz sound too? This frequency is also canceled in your music. So now you have muted the sound you really want to hear.

The problem does not end there. People who make active noise canceling headphones know this, which is why they create their headphones to artificially amplify certain sound frequencies in their music because they know that noise canceling electronic devices will destroy those frequencies. Now your music is completely distorted from what the artists wanted to hear and instead sounds like an approximation of what your headphone company wants you to hear. The end result is very unsatisfactory.

Crystal Clear Noise Canceling Headphones

Noise-canceling headphones do not use electronic devices to block noise and therefore do not introduce intermittent static noise into your music and do not destroy audio frequencies in your music. The result is crystal clear sound just the way the artists wanted to hear it.

Noise-canceling headphones block out more noise

Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones are noise-canceling headphones that block more noise and a wider audio frequency range than active noise-canceling headphones. The mid-set of active noise-canceling headphones blocks noise between 12 and 17 dB. Even really expensive $ 300 active noise-canceling headphones only block 17-19 dB of noise. Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones block an average of 29 dB of sound. If that doesn’t seem like a big difference, keep in mind that something 10 dB louder is twice as strong. This means that these headphones block what sounds like twice the noise.