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[Video, The Verge] Hear how the best ANC headphones handle real world and lab tests
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This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Is ANC safe to use while walking around a city like NYC? I personally find myself rarely needing it unless I'm flying in a plane where I really want to hear as little outside noise as possible.
No, its not safe, you wont hear incoming dangers. But these Noise Canceling Headphones have a nice feature for cities: with their microphones they can give you an „ambient sound“ feature. It mixes the noise from the outside to your music, so you can hear the surroundings while listening to music.
You can hear shit just fine compared to any headphones. There is nearly zero difference in sound that isn't background noise.
While they mute the noise, they don't make it impossible to discern, IMHO. I have the XM5, and I still hear the traffic, constructions etc. If I'm playign music it's harder to hear, but definitely not if it's just ANC by itself.
You're fine. You can hear traffic just fine. Anytime telling you it's any more dangerous than wearing regular headphones has clearly never used ANC.