In a restaurant or at a party, background noise can make it hard to hear people talking, even up close. But soon we could be ...

Most noise-blocking headphones fall into two categories: they use some kind of material to absorb or scatter noise, or they use active cancellation that creates a signal to oppose the noise signal.

Newer noise-cancelling headphones have also helped mitigate this issue, as the listener doesn’t need to continuously raise the device’s volume in order to block out background noise.