Headphone News

We're here at CES 2009, awaiting awesome news from all your favorite headphone manufacturers. Interestingly enough, the first interesting news of the day is only tangentially related to headphones: Sony is introducing a new media player with headphone-independent noise cancellation. That's right, the media player itself will feature active cancellation. We're guessing it'll work the same way as it does in headphones: the device will have a mic, listen in for ambient noise, then output inverse sound waves.

This technology raises a few questions. First of all, what does this mean for active cancellation on headphones? The feature ruins audio quality, gives your headphones a battery dependency, and often means you can't listen to your music without the feature active. If this feature gains popularity, will active cancellation migrate off of headphones and onto devices where it can be better implemented? Further, will the active cancellation focus exclusively on bassy sounds? On the headphones we've reviewed, the active cancellation mainly eliminates lower frequency sound. If the feature doesn't, then will the sound of your pocket fabric rubbing against the mic have an adverse affect on audio quality?

There's a good chance we'll have answers to these questions and more after the Sony press event tonight. 

If you want to check out a story on the media player itself, the Sony Walkman NWZ-X1000, check out the article on our sister site, MediaPlayerInfo.com.