ANR Headsets and hearing loss

Pilotforhire587

Pilotforhire587

Lycra Man
I had a buddy and fellow flight instructor tell me that ANR headsets can actually cause more hearing damage than using a regular headset will. I have a bose X headset and love it. I think it works great and have tried to research over the last few days to find a definitive answer on this. Whats the real deal here
 
From what I understand, that is completely incorrect. I would assume that your friend's logic is that the headset has to create more sound waves in order to trick the ear into thinking it's not hearing as much noise. From what I understand, however, the headset does create more sound waves, but these sound waves interact with the ambient sound in a way that destroys both of them.

Basically the waves are opposites so when they contact each other, they hammer each other into flat lines and the sound is destroyed. I'm not an acoustic engineer or audiologist or anything like that but that is my understanding. I'm sure the info is out there somewhere.

I think it's important to remember that sound waves are basically just vibration and if you had a piece of metal vibrating, it would be possible to cancel out the vibration by introducing an opposite vibration. If the vibration is canceled out in the sound waves, it can't vibrate your ear drum or anything in the inner ear and can't cause damage.
 
I heard this 10 years ago. The argument is that there is 2x the RF energy (ambient noise + modulated "anti-noise") impacting the ear.
 
yeah, the way I thought of it is, If i can't hear anything then I'm not doing anything to damage my hearing. The way you hear sound is by waves traveling through the fluid in your inner ear and stimulating hairs, called cilia, hairs respond to different frequencies of sound. You damage them by overuse of sending to strong of vibrations through the ear, Loud noises, so if you can't hear anything, you aren't stimulating the hairs, if they aren' being stimulated they can't be damaged. Thats my reasoning, some one correct me if I am wrong.
 
deadstick said:
I heard this 10 years ago. The argument is that there is 2x the RF energy (ambient noise + modulated "anti-noise") impacting the ear.
Click to expand...

Not to be pedantic, but it's not RF energy.

ANR headsets generate opposite-phase soundwaves at certain frequencies, cancelling each other out.

In more practical terms, though....

Audiologists have had decades to study ANR headsets. If there was serious long-term hearing damage caused by wearing them, I would submit to you that sales would plummet.
 
Conveniently for pilots, ANR works best with low frequency noises and in most airplanes, these are the loudest, most constant noises that we deal with.
 
These headsets add to your hearing protection. They make perfect sense and are worth the money. Better to use them than no headset or the old ones we used in the 70's and 80's - "say what?":laff:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top