Does a human ear has the ability to cancel background sound and filter only voice?

Because you’ve walked down any street, anywhere within the United Kingdom, at any point in the past decade, you will know the Britain of the early twenty first Century is noisy, crowded and busy.

 

People ferry past you with headsets on, cell phones in front of their faces and from time to time, seemingly chatting to themselves (until you notice the Bluetooth receiver). Many is a time I have heard someone talking and rotating to deal with them, only to see that they aren’t talking to me at all. There are more vehicles #on the# road and there are more roads for the cars to operate on. Yes, this land is really a busy place and sometimes you intend to just shut all of it out.

 

You may be attempting to hear a client’s requests in your hands free headset, or you could just want to forget everything else around you and hear music. For these reasons (and a few more) noise reducing headsets are growing in popularity at an alarming rate. In fact, they’re an excellent invention, and a essential one.

 

But how does such wondrous technology work?

 

Well, to say it simply, there are a couple of types of noise reducing headsets. The 1st is pretty primitive. Standard noise reduction occurs when you place anything in (or over) your ears. In fact, this straightforward fact is merely really employed through the design from the headphones themselves. When they cover your ears, or obstruct them with ear buds, then you are accomplishing basic noise reduction. We’ll call that ‘passive’ noise reduction.

 

The second type, we’ll call ‘active’ noise reduction. With this sort, a special technology is used. Active noise cancelling headsets generate a field of white noise around the ear, which acts as something of a vacuum and drowns out virtually any sound round the wearer. These noise reducing headphones are useful and they work a treat if you happen to live near any road works.

 

There is, of course, a draw back. With some noise cancelling earpieces, you even have a tough time hearing, well, anything at all. This is fine when the ambient sound is limited to kids listening to chavvy music on their phones, or else uppity couples arguing (so violently that you believe ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’ could be holding secret auditions somewhere) and noisy delivery trucks trundling past, but it may be a bit of a downer when you don’t hear oncoming cars, or phrases like “Ow! You stepped on my foot!”

 

So that’s the way it works.

Does a human ear has the ability to cancel background sound and filter only voice?