# Noise cancelation headphones. What are the best?



## Manuel Federici (Jun 3, 2018)

I live in a noisy place; I can hear all the noise with windows closed. It's really hard to concentrate and I can not work in this condition. 

They suggested me to go for noise cancelation headphones. 
I'm searching for a good product that I can also use for mixing and mastering. (It would be the best if i could have extreme noise cancelation :D ).

Thank you for your help!


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## bryla (Jun 3, 2018)

I bought Bose qc 25 for working on the road. They cancel out plane noise!

I don’t know how it compares to others but they are extremely good and highly recommended from me.


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## MisteR (Jun 3, 2018)

I like the bose as well, great for getting a little work done outside the house. But not mixing and mastering! They’re actively cancelling frequencies based on your environment. If you use them without playing music, you will experience many odd things. Hard to imagine getting a reliable mix on top of that. Try the Beyerdynamic DT-880s.


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## packetslave (Jun 4, 2018)

MisteR said:


> I like the bose as well, great for getting a little work done outside the house. But not mixing and mastering! They’re actively cancelling frequencies based on your environment. If you use them without playing music, you will experience many odd things. Hard to imagine getting a reliable mix on top of that. Try the Beyerdynamic DT-880s.



Sonarworks has calibration profiles for the various Bose headsets, both with and without noise-canceling enabling. I haven't personally tried using my QC35 II's to mix, but Sonarworks should at least make them *more* usable.


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## LondonMike (Jun 7, 2018)

I’m thinking of getting some and the newer Sony 1000XM2 has been getting rave reviews and 5 stars from many sources. Said to be superior in sound to the Bose.
I won’t be mixing on them but I’d like to be able to listen critically and know that the frequency balance isn’t way off.


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## jiffybox (Jun 8, 2018)

I live in New York City. My neighbors are a**holes. The city never shuts up. My Bose QC35 have saved my life (and a few of my neighbors' lives, I reckon). Total gamechanger and I'll never go without them. They're almost too noise cancelling in that I can't wear them walking down the street for fear of missing a giant truck careening into the sidewalk behind me. I'd never hear it coming. Good luck!


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## ka00 (Nov 15, 2018)

LondonMike said:


> I’m thinking of getting some and the newer Sony 1000XM2 has been getting rave reviews and 5 stars from many sources. Said to be superior in sound to the Bose.
> I won’t be mixing on them but I’d like to be able to listen critically and know that the frequency balance isn’t way off.



I just bought the newer model Sony, the WH-1000XM3. It’s a lot better than the Bose QC35 I have as well.

The noise cancelling is better, and doesn’t have the hissing white noise that every other Bose noise cancelling version currently has.

Some online reviewers claimed it was good at noise cancelling voices too. But it isn’t. 

I was concerned the sound would be masked in the higher frequencies and too bass heavy. I had tried the mark 2 in stores and that’s what I had noticed. But the mark 3 sounds great.

The sound is richer and more deep than the QC35, and it makes all my old tracks sound better to me. Which is maybe not what you want in a mixing/mastering headphone.

It also comes with a 3.5mm cable if you want to go wired sometimes.

The Bluetooth audio quality is quite good. I’m on an iPhone and it automatically uses the AAC codec on the Bluetooth audio. Not sure how that works but I’m guessing whatever the iPhone is playing is first being encoded in real-time to an AAC stream of audio and is then transferred over bluetooth.

In the past, I’ve not liked the audio quality of Bluetooth audio as the higher end frequencies always seemed missing. I guess those days are over, depending on the device you are sending from.

Haven’t tried it on my Mac yet, but sounded good when connected to an Apple TV.


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## Zhao Shen (Nov 15, 2018)

Yeah can confirm that the Sony WH1000X (any model) is better than the Bose models. Bose wins in terms of comfort and build quality, and the two are pretty close in terms of noise cancellation, but the Sony has far superior sound quality and it's not even close.


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