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"The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo does not just manufacture technology. They make Do machines \u2014 super-powered creation engines designed to help the people who do, do more, do better, do in brand new ways.\nWe've all been on a crowded plane with screaming babies. What's the solution? Some might slip on Bose noise-cancelling headphones to put the world around them on mute. While the headphones offer a nice way to escape the chaos and immerse oneself in hi-fidelity audio, that's not the reason they were invented. But it did start with airplanes.\nOn a flight home from Zurich in 1978, Dr. Amar Bose tried an early set of electronic headphones that were newly onboard for passenger entertainment; \"try\" because he could barely hear anything with the overwhelming cabin noise. This experience sent Bose on a path that would redefine audio performance and comfort over the next few decades. He returned to Boston and set up a research program at Bose Corporation, which he founded years earlier in 1964, to investigate how ambient noise could be reduced with active noise cancellation. The Noise Reduction Technology Group (NRTG) grew out of that program, and in 1989, Bose introduced the first noise-reduction headset, which was appropriately designed for the aviation industry.\nThese days, Bose faces competition from Sennheiser, Sony and even Dr. Dre in the noise-cancellation market, but its position as pioneer of the industry makes it a strong competitor in the high-end headphones market.\nBose focuses on three primary areas: noise cancellation, audio performance and long-term comfort. \"When judging those three areas together, that\u2019s where we excel,\u201D says Product Manager Brian Maguire.\nMashable interviewed Roman Sapiejewski \u2014 an innovative engineer who spearheads Bose's active noise cancellation technology \u2014 about how the technology was developed and how the headphones are continually improved upon.\nHow It Works\n\n\u00A0\nSimply put, noise cancellation does just that \u2014 it cancels out unwanted noise, as illustrated in the handy graphic above, from How Stuff Works. The ambient noise is \"measured\" by small microphones that send a signal to the cancellation circuitry, effectively telling the headphones to produce an antinoise signal that's equal but opposite to the noise you want to cancel.\n\"It's not a complete cancellation that eliminates noise, but it significantly and dramatically reduces the amount of unwanted noise,\" says Sapiejewski. By blocking the environmental noise, the headphones enable you to hear intricacies in the music and to listen to music at lower volumes, which is better for your long-term hearing.\nSapiejewski says it's not a complete cancellation because high frequencies are more difficult to attenuate \u2014 their waves are much shorter than low frequency sounds, so the antinoise must be near-perfectly executed. So part of his mission over the years has been developing technology to effectively reduce the high frequency waves and improve the overall degree of cancellation.\nHistory and Development\n\n\nSince 1964, the company has led tech innovation in all things audio, including televisions, theater systems, speakers and of course, headphones. Though the first set of Bose noise-cancelling headphones \u2014 put to market in 1989 \u2014 were too big for consumer application, they were widely used in the aviation industry. But decades of innovation have yielded headphones with improved design and performance, which have found a comfortable home in the consumer market.\nSapiejewski joined Bose two months after Dr. Bose's fateful flight in 1978, and has worked on noise reduction since then. \"What was exciting about working in counteractive noise technology was the fact that nobody had a product on the market like it, so we had to come up with all the necessary components and figure out the most effective way to produce the noise cancellation,\" he says.\nSo the company leveraged its research in military and commercial headphone noise reduction to develop its proprietary technology. In 1995, it released the Acoustic Noise Cancelling headset Series II, which the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association named \u201CProduct of the Year.\u201D In 1998, the Bose Aviation Headset X was introduced, offering better audio performance with Bose's \"TriPort\" headphone structure. In 2000, Bose introduced the QuietComfort Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones, the first in the consumer QuietComfort series that's on shelves today. An improved version was released in 2002, the Bose QuietComfort 2, and in 2006, Bose released the QuietComfort 3, with new features that suppress the pressure some consumers report feeling while wearing the headphones.\nThe newest jewel in the Bose crown is the $299 QuietComfort 15, which was introduced in 2009 and offers improved attenuation, thanks to microphones both inside and outside of the earcup. This system has a more keen sense of the sound in louder environments and is able to more effectively measure and react to ambient noise. Because noise reduction can vary from person to person depending on factors such head shape and even one's haircut, the exterior microphone helps to nullify the differences in cancellation from user to user \u2014 and a more consistent product is obviously a better one. The proprietary ear cushion offers noise attenuation for higher frequencies (which, as discussed above, are harder to cancel), and the materials used were chosen for their ability to block unwanted noise.\nThe State of the Market and What's Next\nBose is the gold standard on the market, and though it's privately held and doesn't release financials, it's estimated to have yearly revenues of $2 billion. Bose reinvests a \"significant\" portion of profits into the company for research and development, and Sapiejewski says it's this commitment to innovation that \"makes me excited about work.\"\n\"We don\u2019t start thinking about new products [by] thinking about the money. We think about how to make better products, and we try become our own customer. We understand what the requirements are and we need to satisfy our own senses before we try and sell something to our customers. We have a commitment to and passion for understanding the problems related to the product.\"\nAnd so the company will continue to tweak its headphones. Sapiejewski says Bose might even add a much-requested \"pass-through audio\" option, which would allow the headphones to play music like regular headphones, without noise cancellation. \"In order to make the system work properly, we have only one mode \u2014 an active noise cancellation mode \u2014 in which you can also listen to audio signals,\" Sapiejewski says. \"But we\u2019ve considered the option of making pass-through audio possible, especially in the future.\"\nWhat kind of headphones do you use? What features would you like to see on future iterations? Let us know in the comments below.\nSeries Supported by Lenovo\n\n\nThe Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo makes machines specifically for the innovators. The creators. The people who move the world forward. Machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad, meticulously engineered with visibly smart second-generation Intel\u00AE CoreTM processors to help the people who do, do what's never been done.\n\n\u00A0\nImage courtesy of HowStuffWorks"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/12/01/bose-noise-cancelling-headphones/>