Noise cancelling headphones

[ejboyd5]

Hey guys, Does anyone have any experience using a noise cancelling headset in our loud old cars? I usually just wear foam earplugs but have been wondering if the headset will do a better job while allowing bluetooth connectivity for both music and phone calls. I am particularly interested in how they deal with loud exhausts and wind noise with the windows down. Anyone care to comment?

If a Porsche is too loud for you, you are too old to be driving one.
By the way, as a regular driver of fire trucks and ambulances, I can attest to the number of other drivers who are oblivious to our sirens and air horns because of their closed windows, operating air conditioning units and entertainment systems. I can only imagine how much worse the situation would be if noise cancelling headphones were allowed.

[frederik]

Nobody likes tinnitus.

[BubbaG]

check your local laws as it is illegal to drive with headphones on in some states/ countries.

other than that , +1 for the bose. Been flying with them for years. Quality is second to none

[Orval_F]

I am talking about stray RF from the electronics inside the headset. Granted -- Bluetooth emissions are in the milliwatt range, but what is the tolerance for extended-duration. Most of those standards relate to short-term exposure, while headsets/Bluetooth offer extended exposure. I am just reporting my observations and have chosen to use simple David Clarks when I fly.

[Longballa]

Air pod pros work great when I'm just cruising. When hard driving I remove them.

[Chris Pomares]

I guess there is a benefit to being half def. Half a dozen ear infections when surfing in my youth, a few hundred thousand handgun rounds in the 1990's, and I can drive from Colorado to California in sheer bliss without ear plugs.

[majordad]

I’ve high tone deafness and use Bose over ear headphones in my 72 S. Even opening the window does not effect them. You only really appreciate their effectiveness when you take them off !

[NorthernThrux]

I am talking about stray RF from the electronics inside the headset. Granted -- Bluetooth emissions are in the milliwatt range, but what is the tolerance for extended-duration. Most of those standards relate to short-term exposure, while headsets/Bluetooth offer extended exposure. I am just reporting my observations and have chosen to use simple David Clarks when I fly.

Ahh, I get where you are coming from. Well, tens of millions of people have been wearing electronics in their ears for almost 50 years (hearing aids), with no observed increase in brain cancers in hundreds of publications. Completely separate from the cell phone literature, but consistent with it. If you get even closer to the brain than a hearing aid, studies show cochlear implants (which go into the brains of kids - who are presumably the most vulnerable) do not result in any increased incidence in brain cancers. Not gliomas, not meningiomas and not even acoustic neuromas (the brain area where the implants go in).

Here's just one of hundreds of studies, this one in a vulnerable population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179583/ . The paper is notable because they debunked their own earlier work in a single patient which said "oh look this person with a cochlear implant has a brain tumour. Cochler implants must cause brain tumours". That's not causality or science. That's anecdotal. In their own study of 17,129 person-years of data, the incidences were the same as the normal population.

BTW, magnetic field drops as 1/r^^3 and electric field as 1/r^^2 in the near field, which is the electromagnetic regime these devices operate in. You'll get far more radiation from the wiring in your house, the sensors in your car and cell phone towers than you'll ever get from these in-ear devices. And this is not to say those other sources don't have chronic effects. It's just that they tend to be so small it's extraordinarily difficult to differentiate them from other sources of risk. For example, there was a study some 10 years ago that showed that people that worked early shifts had an incidence in lung cancer. Lots of crazy ideas were put forward. Turned out, as a group, they spent a lot of time in drive throughs getting their early morning coffee with the windows rolled down and it was the exhaust fumes they were breathing that was the source of the (very small) increase in lung disease. Biology is messy. People are messier. SO causality is pretty hard to prove. Some things are obvious though. Bullets kill people. You don't need a large N study to show that!

Why did I pick the coffee example? Because the risk of getting disease when driving an early 911 is going to be elevated simply because of driving a vehicle with 50 year old emission standards. Far more than anything we do to our bodies to alleviate the increased noise (or as I prefer to call it - music).

[raspritz]

I have experimented with wearing low-profile noise-cancelling earbuds under my helmet while driving my '67 911 racecar, which is exceedingly loud. Unfortunately, it is tough to keep them in my ears; they tend to fall out when I pull the helmet on.

As to the nonsense discussed above, I am a physician and genetic scientist. Electromagnetic radiation that damages DNA and that thus causes cancer, etc. is "ionizing radiation", and generally is fairly high-energy at that. The type of electromagnetic radiation in household and medical electronic devices (not counting x-ray machines and color TV cathode ray tubes from the early 1950s), including RF, is low-energy non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, and it has zero effect on DNA. This was a serious question in the mid-1950s when high-energy radars were deployed to detect Russian bombers and folks were worried about health effects. This all has been studied up the wazoo and the questions are long since settled. There is no danger. Move on. Worry about Covid, not earbuds.

[JackMan]

In my race car, 1989 944S2, very loud with a 7krpm redline and short gears, ie always above 5k rpm, I use custom form fitting ear plugs made for me by an audiologist. They are the bomb. I tried using them in my street 911s that are swb and lwb and a G model. All are race cars cleverly designed to look like street cars. They are loud. the custom made ear plugs block too much noise that I feel unsafe driving them. I stick with really good form fitting disposable form earplugs. I prefer the "blue" ones that I get from CVS. They are generic brand and work great. However, once used toss because they lose their ability to expand once compressed. Yes, you can reuse them but their efficiency drops off after one use.

I"m 57 and have long term hearing damage from too many concerts in my teens and 20s on the front row near the PA of two specific concerts, Ted Nugent and Aerosmith. Plus in my teens and early 20s I had a stereo in my car that was louder than my 911s and always turned to 11. Oh well. Plus, 10,000 plus rounds of rifle and pistol rounds in my youth with zero hearing protection. Foam plugs work just fine for my needs, your needs may vary.