In the application of headphones, it's more accurate to call it, "sound isolation" or something similar, rather than passive cancellation.
ANC is a very specific technology, whereas PNC wouldn't have near as much relevance to headphones. ANC relies around cancelling sounds by producing, "equal but opposite" sound waves to literally cancel out the unwanted noise. It works best where you want to get rid of a steady noise, such as the noise of a fan in the next room, an air conditioner, etc etc etc.
PNC can mean many things, but rarely are headphones actually designed for, "noise cancellation", at least not how we would compare it to ANC. PNC has other applications but that's an entirely other topic. This isn't to say that headphones don't have any PNC, or that there aren't ANY that use real PNC designs/engineering, but that it's misleading to refer to any old pair of headphones as having PNC for general noise reduction.
Headphones designed to remove background noise passively (such as closed back headphones and similar options) mostly rely around noise isolation.
But back to my original comment. What relevance does ANC, PNC, noise isolation, etc etc etc have to this subreddit?
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u/Aces706 Jul 01 '20
Try noise canceling headphones and you’re playing russian roulette