Active cancellation keeps headphones quiet

Innovative ANC technology effectively reduces ambient noise, allowing users to enjoy their music in noisy environments without the need to have the volume at excessive levels.

Audio-Technica has chosen Wolfson's new active noise cancellation (ANC) technology for its latest in-ear headphones, the QuietPoint ATH-ANC3.

Wolfson's innovative ANC technology effectively reduces ambient noise, allowing users to enjoy their music in noisy environments without the need to have the volume at excessive levels.

In contrast with traditional ANC solutions, Wolfson's new technology provides more noise cancellation over a wider frequency range, significantly improving the performance of compact in-ear headphones.

Audio-Technica's headphones are the world's first consumer products to use Wolfson's unique ANC technology.

Innovative ANC technology forms a key part of the Wolfson AudioPlus strategy, which builds on Wolfson's high fidelity audio expertise by integrating incremental mixed-signal technologies and key elements of the audio signal chain, enabling new or improved end user experiences and more highly optimised, cost effective solutions.

The new Audio-Technica headphones incorporating Wolfson's ANC technology are the inaugural product from the Sonaptic acquisition made in July 2007.

"Many existing feedback based ANC products rely on forming a physical block between the external noise and the users ears, such as bulky foam casings or deep in-ear plugs, to help improve performance", says Peter Frith, Wolfson's CTO.

"Thanks to our unique feed forward technology Wolfson's ANC products effectively lower the ambient noise around a user allowing them a safer and more enjoyable audio experience".

"Removing the need for bulky sound insulation also empowers designers to use Wolfson's ANC to improve the user experience of the latest compact products created for today's mobile lifestyle".

"Effective noise cancellation helps make the listening experience more pleasant in noisy environments".

"Whether listening to a portable media player on the train, or watching movies on a flight, Audio-Technica's lightweight and compact QuietPoint ATH-ANC3 in-ear headphones benefit from Wolfson's AudioPlus technology, significantly reducing background noise so that users can enjoy music or movies with exceptional clarity at comfortable volume levels", commented Mr.Yoshio Aida, General Manager of Audio-Technica and Director of Engineering.

"Wolfson delivers the best noise cancellation performance we've seen to date".

"We're pleased to be leading the market as the first to incorporate this technology into our products".

Traditional ANC technology uses feedback techniques where a microphone is fitted within the earpiece, and the sound (audio and ambient noise) is fed back to remove the noise from the original audio.

Although this approach goes some way to reduce ambient noise, traditional ANC designs have also had to rely on additional passive noise reduction techniques to try and improve their performance, such as padding or the large form factor of traditional, over ear, noise-cancelling headphones.

In contrast, Wolfson's ANC uses a unique feed-forward technique.

Here the microphone is fitted on the outside of the earpiece and the ambient noise is inverted and then mixed with the original audio.

This proprietary feed-forward approach delivers much better overall performance, cancelling more decibels of noise over a wider frequency range than existing feedback solutions.

Furthermore, the Wolfson feed-forward ANC technology only cancels the ambient noise and, unlike the traditional feedback method, does not interfere with music playback.

This means that users can have an enjoyable listening experience in noisy environments without resorting to excessive volumes.

The Wolfson ANC technology also delivers extremely efficient, low power consumption, enabling headphone makers to design the Wolfson ANC technology into compact and easily portable form factors, with long battery life that users demand.

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