Headphone Market Trends

Conventional “open-style” headphone and earphone designs can be comfortable in use, but they are not suitable for use in noisy environments such as rail transport and aircraft. There are two key disadvantages.

• They allow ambient noise to reach the ears, which makes it difficult to hear the music and encourages the listener to increase the music volume to “drown-out” the ambient noise.
• There is some outward emission of the listener’s music, which leaks out and disturbs nearby travellers.

In response to these issues “closed-style” circumaural headphones which incorporate active ANC technology have become popular, especially when flying. These designs also have some disadvantages.

• They are very expensive.
• They are large and bulky, and not convenient for everyday commuting.
• Closed-style headphones are intrinsically resonant, and not well-suited to high-quality audio reproduction.

In these respects, closed-type in-ear earphones have some advantages to offer, and have become the default choice for the majority of customers who want to upgrade from the earphones that are supplied “bundled” with their portable music player, with the following advantages.

• They can be small, convenient and cheap to produce.
• They provide some passive noise attenuation of the surrounding ambient noise for the listener, and they reduce the leakage of music sound outwards from the earphone.
• They often feature a good bass response.

However, many people find closed-type in-ear phones very uncomfortable to use. Listeners often complain about a feeling of isolation, or loss of balance, which makes the design unsuitable for commuting, where the user must alight from trains or buses, or keep their balance in a moving, unstable cabin.

Additionally, many users find closed-type in-ear phones uncomfortable when flying, especially when pressure changes occur in the cabin, because a blocked ear-canal system does not allow the air pressure to equilibrate on either side of the tympanic membrane.

Incus ANC technology addresses all of these issues and takes ear-phone design to the next level!