Noise Cancelling v Noise Reducing headphones

[ziplock43]

Noise cancelling headphones seem to use battery power to actively cancel the noise, whereas reducing headphones just muffle external sound.

What type of headphones are better for a home-recording studio?

 

[darrin_h2000]

depends on the design.

Noise reducing would use Dolby b,c to remove noise from the signal.

Noise canceling uses a mic outside of the cups and amplifies the signal out of phase to cancel it out.

Both designs scoop out the mids...studio monitor cans have flat response.

 

[Farview]

Neither. I have yet to step into a studio that uses headphones that have these features.

There are special drumming headphones which amount to hearing protection phones (like the guys with the flashlights at the airport wear) with speakers in them. But I don't think that is what you are talking about, there are a lot of normal headphones that isolate well enough for studio use.

 

[Armistice]

+1 on Farview

You want to hear what's actually going on so you can deal with it... not a processed version thereof...

 

[darrin_h2000]

Neither. I have yet to step into a studio that uses headphones that have these features.

There are special drumming headphones which amount to hearing protection phones (like the guys with the flashlights at the airport wear) with speakers in them. But I don't think that is what you are talking about, there are a lot of normal headphones that isolate well enough for studio use.

Even those are designed to not leak into the overheads...not to keep the drummer from hearing the environment.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Yeah - the only time, really, that anything like that would be even remotely appropriate would be in tracking, not mixing.

I've been listening to my iPod on a pretty cool pair of Skullcandy earbuds, which really do reject a fair amount of external noise (they're basically earplugs with speakers in them). I've actually been pretty curious to try them for tracking, as they should theoretically allow me to monitor at lower levels, making bleed less likely. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet, though...

 

[Farview]

Even those are designed to not leak into the overheads...not to keep the drummer from hearing the environment.

They do both. They allow the drummer to turn down the headphones to a comfortable level because they block out the live drums.

If the headphones are bleeding into the overheads, the drummer is deaf or you're using open back phones.

 

[Chibi Nappa]

Passive noise reduction all the way.

I'm an Extreme Isolation Headphones guy. Google 'em. They're pretty much ear protection built around headphones.

 

[TheChikenMaster]

I use shure e2 for drums. I could hear everything clearer with them over the drums. And they protect my ears as well. I prefer them over the hd280s.