When ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) specialists are asked about the purpose or benefit of ANC they generally answer “noise damping, isolation, reduction etc”. Receiving the counter argument why not use earmuffs, potentially in combination with earphones, make one realize that the principle benefit of ANC is much more a matter of wearing comfort. Noise isolation as good as in earmuffs for industrial applications is offered by a small, lightweight comfortable headphone. This is realized by augmenting the passive noise isolation of a headphone by active noise reduction. Here, typically a closed headphone is used. Extrapolating the primary benefit of ANC headphones, leads to the vision that ANC headphones in the future should mainly gain in wearing comfort. This paper deals with a first technological approach towards this target. A semi-open headphone with its typical wearing comfort advantages providing the broadband noise isolation of closed earmuffs.
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