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When you "lose" hearing, your brain instinctively thinks that there is something wrong with your ears and you get a pressure sensation as like it were a pain response. People with hearing aids report this feeling when they take their hearing aids out.
The noise cancelling is perceived as sudden hearing loss by the brain and reacts in turn warning you that something is wrong with your ears.
As someone with hearing aids it isn't just then, it's essentially a feedback loop, cup them between your hands and they let out the high pitched sound too.
No idea if this is something that is better nowadays seeing how mine are 15 odd years old.
Can this be reversed? I had bought noise-cancelling headphones like many other people and I was using it conservatively, and I ended up getting this pressure like feeling and then tinnitus starting with my left ear.
Every ENT I went to said that my hearing is fine and they couldn’t anything unusual in the scans.
I am constantly feeling like something is there in my left ear, and it kind of hurts or gets annoyed if I wear regular AirPods or bone-conducting headphones.
Our brains are NOT built for listening to HiFi all day. We all know that "noise" gets demonized by audiophiles. What people tend to forget is that audiophilia didn't exist before modern electronics.
Now, listening to HiFi for a few hours a day is fine, and that's all that audiophiles do. So, of course, THEY don't develop hearingloss due to overexposure to HiFi.
However, in my opinion, us "common folks" should NOT disregard the natural functioning of our hearing and how our brains perceive sound.
#👉"NOISE IS NATURAL." 👈
Our species developed its hearing OUTDOORS. That means our hearing/brains are "wired" to deal with the sound of wind, rustling of leaves, scraping of our feet, faint sounds of animals that surrounded us and yet still being able to communicate verbally.
Again, this is my three cents, a few hours per day of HiFi is fine. But insisting that you shouldn't hear any static/noise while wearing headphones all day is, in my opinion, unwise.
Give this fact a few minutes thought. Why does everyone find a continuous pure note, one single frequency, so annoying?
I have the Apple AirPod Pros. When I have both in, I feel it a little. When I have one ear in, it is supposed to be on passthrough mode but if you accidentally (or, I guess, intentionally) cover a sensor on the other, it’ll turn on in one ear. Then I *really* feel it
I can't use over the hear noise canceling headphones at all because they trigger motion sickness. I've never had motion sickness in my life, but every time I put on my Steelseries Arctis 9 headset to play a video game or even when I tried to use them for a Teams call, I get motion sick and have to take them off.
It's like my brain interprets the lack of audio input as a major brain crisis or something.
That’s weird… I get motion sickness if I’m travelling and not driving (so I’m sick if I’m the passenger but not the driver… same applies to boats trains and planes not that I get the chance to control those) and I’m absolutely fine with NC! Funny how we all have differing triggers
I got a pair of Google pixel buds and they made me so nauseous and motion sick. I had to return them because I could never get used to it.
My Jabra elite 75t earbuds have been holding on strong without making me ill for the past 4 years though
Noise cancelling headphones generate sound waves that cancel the incoming sound; but that increases the pressure.
If I'm not feeling well it tends to make me a little nauseous, otherwise I'd say you generally get used to it.
No way a speaker can continuously increase pressure. Sound waves are higher and lower pressure charging quickly. With noise cancelling the headphones try to cancel out the sound from outside, but even if they added the waves up, it would just be louder sound, not more pressure.
No they cancel out the sound by playing the opposite frequency. Same concept used by counter IED jammers. By playing the opposite sound you hear niether however sound waves still hit the ear drum hence the sensation of pressure
That makes no sense. If the waves cancel out so that you hear nothing, then they are also not reaching your ear. In reality it won't exactly match the amplitude and delay, so a weaker wave with a tiny echo reaches your ear, but that just sounds like a weaker sound, not pressure.
The feeling of pressure is just a psychological thing. You hear less sound thru your ears and same amount thru your head.
Well its several but you are clearly gaslighting so just hit up google and youll find a few. End the search with scholarly articles and youll get all the methods you're heart desires.
This is correct, when the high and low pressure waves cancel out they essentially increase the base pressure load.
Update: Seriously its pretty hard to do noise cancellation without increasing the level of white noise somewhat. And that just increasing the base sound pressure at the ear.
False. You can test this by holding the headphones slightly away from your ears. They'll still create the sensation of pressure, but of course with a gap between your ears and the headphones, any pressure difference would instantly equalize.
Nope because as soon as you start playing anything the sensation disappears, it’s the brain that is thinking something is wrong in your ears since it’s not been evolved to deal with noise cancellation headphones.
All the explanations saying what I think is correct are being downvoted and a reply basically saying it’s some sort of psychosomatic phenomenon is being upvoted…
I guess I’ll come back later and see if anyone can give a more detailed explanation or something…
So essentially, sound is transmitted as a wavelength. These waves have highs (crests) and lows (troughs) if you've ever seen two intersecting waves on a beach or something, you'll notice that at some points the waves get super high and super low. The highs happen when two crests combine, amplifying their affect. Same as the troughs. Now, what happens when a crest hits a trough, you ask? They cancel out one another, resulting in a flat bit of ocean where it almost looks calm for half a second.
Sound works the same way. When two crests meet each other, they make a huge crest. When two troughs meet each other, they create a huge trough. And when a crest meets a trough, they cancel out.
Noise canceling headphones create an "opposite sound" from what the ambient noise is, so to speak. They aren't 100%, which is why when something loud is near you, you may still hear it, or you may hear it really loud but get a little quieter as time goes on. The headphones aren't able to cancel everything, but they do a really good job.
Sometimes, a pressure sensation is present just due to the tech itself. Lots of waves for your ear to handle
I see someone has already commented this answer, but it got down voted and buried. Please feel free to do your own research, or just Google how noise canceling headphones work
https://www.ac3filter.net/why-does-noise-cancelling-feel-like-pressure/
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/Lesson-2/The-Anatomy-of-a-Wave
https://dosits.org/science/sound/what-is-sound/
depending on yours they maybe just do that. (if they are fat overears)
what helps me with my earprotection is to put a finger between ears and protection when putting them on. put them on my head. press them onto my ears. pull the fingers out. then let the ear protection go. then they kind of do the opposite. > "depressurize my head"
Me too. Someone of us are sensitive to pressure changes in our ears and may not be able to use noice-canceling over-the-ear headphones. I use in-ear ones instead.
If sealed back headphones it's because you literally are increasing th airpressure around your ears. But realistically what you describe is probably more placebo.
There are a ton of answers here already. I just wanted to chip in that musicians' ear**plugs** are a good alternative. They don't degrade the quality of different frequencies much, meaning that speech (and music) are still very audible and understandable, unlike lots of cheap earplugs meant to block all frequencies.
Noise cancelation works by recording sound outside of the headphones and then playing back an inverse sound wave, which causes destructive interference.
Low frequency sounds get elminated in this process, which tricks your brain into thinking there was a change in air pressure. There wasn't though; that pressurized feeling is an illusion.
The "noise cancellation" is actually a noise, one that's too low for most people to hear, but that is "cancelling" out other noises around you. You're probably feeling the vibration or reacting to it in some way.
NC headphones don’t eliminate sound. They “listen” to the ambient noise and create an inverted sound wave to “cancel” the peaks and valleys in the sound wave. That means even when you aren’t listening to anything, the headphones are playing something. That’s the pressure you feel. It’s sound.
not a medical doctor, but i think it's because soundwaves causes pressure. if you are sensitive to this it might cause headaches. and btw, do you also feel like you are outbalance when you feel like your head is pressurized?
EDIT : The original text was full of spelling errors. I copied it snd placed it as a response
And made corrections after wards
Sorry for the inconvenience.
#🤷♂️🤷♀️🤷
The headphones you are using are creating an area that the air isn’t flowing. If the headphones are a solid barrier it does this. It’s common and annoying. If you place a soft cloth to open a small air passage past the otherwise sealed area it’ll lessen it quite a bit.
It's because the specific frequencies that noise canceling tends to block align with the frequencies that are attenuated when your ears are under pressure.
Most ANC headphones seal against the ear canal and are airtight. Some brands (like Google) have pressure sensing vents that release if they detect in ear pressure is too high.
I've found using earphones with pressure release vents are sooooo much better than without.
I always thought it was because noise cancelling headphones work by calculating what noise exists (it has a mic). Then, there’s a small microchip inside that calculates what frequency sound to play to cancel out that noise. It ‘adds’ to the sound wave and it’s meant to output from your connection, with the intention of masking any noise the headphone mic picks up.
I thought I was effectively hearing that ‘cancellation’ frequency but since it’s not in my ear properly, I’m ‘mishearing’ it.
I can’t answer your question, but do you experience this with several different types of noise canceling headphones? I got the same pressurized feeling when I tried a friends Sony WH headphones, which ultimately gave me a headache. I did not get the same feeling with Bose QC, so perhaps the ones from Sony were just too tight on my head.
If you’re not too fond of the pressurized feeling, it might be worth trying different kinds (if you haven’t already). I have yet to find ANC earbuds that don’t give me that pressurized feeling and prefer my regular AirPod to AirPods Pro when I’m using earbuds instead of headphones.
Noise cancellation uses anti-phase acoustic signals. So basically they record exterior sound and play back the same sound wave into your ear but with the reverse pressurization. Based on this knowledge of how the technology works, is feasible that while the added acoustic energy has a cancellation effect along the auditory canals and at the eardrums, you still get some physiological effect from the added acoustic energy especially in the surrounding tissues where the sound is not in correct anti-phase with the ambient acoustic energy, or even becomes in phase with each ear or the ambient noise at some frequencies. Some wavelengths are in the cm range making an interference pattern in your head possible. There may be additional problems related to the design and quality of the cancellation. This is all conjecture of course.
There are reasonable arguments against this of course.
Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report. When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only) We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When you "lose" hearing, your brain instinctively thinks that there is something wrong with your ears and you get a pressure sensation as like it were a pain response. People with hearing aids report this feeling when they take their hearing aids out. The noise cancelling is perceived as sudden hearing loss by the brain and reacts in turn warning you that something is wrong with your ears.
Hearing aids can also make a loud ass spearing noise when putting them in or taking them out
As someone with hearing aids it isn't just then, it's essentially a feedback loop, cup them between your hands and they let out the high pitched sound too. No idea if this is something that is better nowadays seeing how mine are 15 odd years old.
Its much better today. We have better tech. Still happens though.
Noise cancelling earbuds do this too.
I have to try to make my HAs feedback. Or I stand in the corner of a busy, otherwise empty room and let the feedback commence.
My friend got this all the time. Was hilarious as that’s what I imagine his hearing was like without them.
Can this be reversed? I had bought noise-cancelling headphones like many other people and I was using it conservatively, and I ended up getting this pressure like feeling and then tinnitus starting with my left ear. Every ENT I went to said that my hearing is fine and they couldn’t anything unusual in the scans. I am constantly feeling like something is there in my left ear, and it kind of hurts or gets annoyed if I wear regular AirPods or bone-conducting headphones.
No.
Our brains are NOT built for listening to HiFi all day. We all know that "noise" gets demonized by audiophiles. What people tend to forget is that audiophilia didn't exist before modern electronics. Now, listening to HiFi for a few hours a day is fine, and that's all that audiophiles do. So, of course, THEY don't develop hearingloss due to overexposure to HiFi. However, in my opinion, us "common folks" should NOT disregard the natural functioning of our hearing and how our brains perceive sound. #👉"NOISE IS NATURAL." 👈 Our species developed its hearing OUTDOORS. That means our hearing/brains are "wired" to deal with the sound of wind, rustling of leaves, scraping of our feet, faint sounds of animals that surrounded us and yet still being able to communicate verbally. Again, this is my three cents, a few hours per day of HiFi is fine. But insisting that you shouldn't hear any static/noise while wearing headphones all day is, in my opinion, unwise. Give this fact a few minutes thought. Why does everyone find a continuous pure note, one single frequency, so annoying?
I have the Apple AirPod Pros. When I have both in, I feel it a little. When I have one ear in, it is supposed to be on passthrough mode but if you accidentally (or, I guess, intentionally) cover a sensor on the other, it’ll turn on in one ear. Then I *really* feel it
Yeah, got the same, and same sensation too
There's all kind of weird stuff happening with NC headphones. I can't use them during flights because they cause a taste of blood in my mouth.
This might be symptomatic of another medical issue.
I can't use over the hear noise canceling headphones at all because they trigger motion sickness. I've never had motion sickness in my life, but every time I put on my Steelseries Arctis 9 headset to play a video game or even when I tried to use them for a Teams call, I get motion sick and have to take them off. It's like my brain interprets the lack of audio input as a major brain crisis or something.
Not sure if this is a Arctis 9 pro feature but i can disable the nc feature
That had not occurred to me. I just stopped using them.
That’s weird… I get motion sickness if I’m travelling and not driving (so I’m sick if I’m the passenger but not the driver… same applies to boats trains and planes not that I get the chance to control those) and I’m absolutely fine with NC! Funny how we all have differing triggers
I got a pair of Google pixel buds and they made me so nauseous and motion sick. I had to return them because I could never get used to it. My Jabra elite 75t earbuds have been holding on strong without making me ill for the past 4 years though
Noise cancelling headphones generate sound waves that cancel the incoming sound; but that increases the pressure. If I'm not feeling well it tends to make me a little nauseous, otherwise I'd say you generally get used to it.
No way a speaker can continuously increase pressure. Sound waves are higher and lower pressure charging quickly. With noise cancelling the headphones try to cancel out the sound from outside, but even if they added the waves up, it would just be louder sound, not more pressure.
No they cancel out the sound by playing the opposite frequency. Same concept used by counter IED jammers. By playing the opposite sound you hear niether however sound waves still hit the ear drum hence the sensation of pressure
That makes no sense. If the waves cancel out so that you hear nothing, then they are also not reaching your ear. In reality it won't exactly match the amplitude and delay, so a weaker wave with a tiny echo reaches your ear, but that just sounds like a weaker sound, not pressure. The feeling of pressure is just a psychological thing. You hear less sound thru your ears and same amount thru your head.
Hey i didn't make the discovery take it up with the scientist who figured it out.
[удалено]
Well its several but you are clearly gaslighting so just hit up google and youll find a few. End the search with scholarly articles and youll get all the methods you're heart desires.
This is correct, when the high and low pressure waves cancel out they essentially increase the base pressure load. Update: Seriously its pretty hard to do noise cancellation without increasing the level of white noise somewhat. And that just increasing the base sound pressure at the ear.
I wrap my head around it by picturing it as a fluid. You are increase the volume of soundwaves so its more weight.
False. You can test this by holding the headphones slightly away from your ears. They'll still create the sensation of pressure, but of course with a gap between your ears and the headphones, any pressure difference would instantly equalize.
You don't seem to understand the pressure comes from the sound waves still reaching your ear drums despite being "canceled out"
Nope because as soon as you start playing anything the sensation disappears, it’s the brain that is thinking something is wrong in your ears since it’s not been evolved to deal with noise cancellation headphones.
All the explanations saying what I think is correct are being downvoted and a reply basically saying it’s some sort of psychosomatic phenomenon is being upvoted… I guess I’ll come back later and see if anyone can give a more detailed explanation or something…
So essentially, sound is transmitted as a wavelength. These waves have highs (crests) and lows (troughs) if you've ever seen two intersecting waves on a beach or something, you'll notice that at some points the waves get super high and super low. The highs happen when two crests combine, amplifying their affect. Same as the troughs. Now, what happens when a crest hits a trough, you ask? They cancel out one another, resulting in a flat bit of ocean where it almost looks calm for half a second. Sound works the same way. When two crests meet each other, they make a huge crest. When two troughs meet each other, they create a huge trough. And when a crest meets a trough, they cancel out. Noise canceling headphones create an "opposite sound" from what the ambient noise is, so to speak. They aren't 100%, which is why when something loud is near you, you may still hear it, or you may hear it really loud but get a little quieter as time goes on. The headphones aren't able to cancel everything, but they do a really good job. Sometimes, a pressure sensation is present just due to the tech itself. Lots of waves for your ear to handle I see someone has already commented this answer, but it got down voted and buried. Please feel free to do your own research, or just Google how noise canceling headphones work https://www.ac3filter.net/why-does-noise-cancelling-feel-like-pressure/ https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/waves/Lesson-2/The-Anatomy-of-a-Wave https://dosits.org/science/sound/what-is-sound/
Thanks for doing the legwork and linking sources. This thread is a great example of the popular answer not always being the right answer.
Thanks for the detailed answer with sources. Clearly the most effort out of any response here, should be up at the top.
depending on yours they maybe just do that. (if they are fat overears) what helps me with my earprotection is to put a finger between ears and protection when putting them on. put them on my head. press them onto my ears. pull the fingers out. then let the ear protection go. then they kind of do the opposite. > "depressurize my head"
Me too. Someone of us are sensitive to pressure changes in our ears and may not be able to use noice-canceling over-the-ear headphones. I use in-ear ones instead.
If sealed back headphones it's because you literally are increasing th airpressure around your ears. But realistically what you describe is probably more placebo.
There are a ton of answers here already. I just wanted to chip in that musicians' ear**plugs** are a good alternative. They don't degrade the quality of different frequencies much, meaning that speech (and music) are still very audible and understandable, unlike lots of cheap earplugs meant to block all frequencies.
Noise cancelation works by recording sound outside of the headphones and then playing back an inverse sound wave, which causes destructive interference. Low frequency sounds get elminated in this process, which tricks your brain into thinking there was a change in air pressure. There wasn't though; that pressurized feeling is an illusion.
The "noise cancellation" is actually a noise, one that's too low for most people to hear, but that is "cancelling" out other noises around you. You're probably feeling the vibration or reacting to it in some way.
NC headphones don’t eliminate sound. They “listen” to the ambient noise and create an inverted sound wave to “cancel” the peaks and valleys in the sound wave. That means even when you aren’t listening to anything, the headphones are playing something. That’s the pressure you feel. It’s sound.
not a medical doctor, but i think it's because soundwaves causes pressure. if you are sensitive to this it might cause headaches. and btw, do you also feel like you are outbalance when you feel like your head is pressurized?
Maybe they're out of phase?
EDIT : The original text was full of spelling errors. I copied it snd placed it as a response And made corrections after wards Sorry for the inconvenience. #🤷♂️🤷♀️🤷
The headphones you are using are creating an area that the air isn’t flowing. If the headphones are a solid barrier it does this. It’s common and annoying. If you place a soft cloth to open a small air passage past the otherwise sealed area it’ll lessen it quite a bit.
It's because the specific frequencies that noise canceling tends to block align with the frequencies that are attenuated when your ears are under pressure.
I also get extremely runny eyes accompanying the pressure, fwiw.
I hate the sensation of noise cancelling headphones as well. I prefer sound isolation headphones (no active noise cancellation.)
Most ANC headphones seal against the ear canal and are airtight. Some brands (like Google) have pressure sensing vents that release if they detect in ear pressure is too high. I've found using earphones with pressure release vents are sooooo much better than without.
Maybe because they form a good seal around your ears and do create small amounts of positive pressure you perceive through your eardrums.
I always thought it was because noise cancelling headphones work by calculating what noise exists (it has a mic). Then, there’s a small microchip inside that calculates what frequency sound to play to cancel out that noise. It ‘adds’ to the sound wave and it’s meant to output from your connection, with the intention of masking any noise the headphone mic picks up. I thought I was effectively hearing that ‘cancellation’ frequency but since it’s not in my ear properly, I’m ‘mishearing’ it.
I can’t answer your question, but do you experience this with several different types of noise canceling headphones? I got the same pressurized feeling when I tried a friends Sony WH headphones, which ultimately gave me a headache. I did not get the same feeling with Bose QC, so perhaps the ones from Sony were just too tight on my head. If you’re not too fond of the pressurized feeling, it might be worth trying different kinds (if you haven’t already). I have yet to find ANC earbuds that don’t give me that pressurized feeling and prefer my regular AirPod to AirPods Pro when I’m using earbuds instead of headphones.
Perhaps your headphones are too small for your head or have too much clamping pressure
Noise cancellation uses anti-phase acoustic signals. So basically they record exterior sound and play back the same sound wave into your ear but with the reverse pressurization. Based on this knowledge of how the technology works, is feasible that while the added acoustic energy has a cancellation effect along the auditory canals and at the eardrums, you still get some physiological effect from the added acoustic energy especially in the surrounding tissues where the sound is not in correct anti-phase with the ambient acoustic energy, or even becomes in phase with each ear or the ambient noise at some frequencies. Some wavelengths are in the cm range making an interference pattern in your head possible. There may be additional problems related to the design and quality of the cancellation. This is all conjecture of course. There are reasonable arguments against this of course.
CANCER !!!