Perhaps not the biggest complaint about air travel, but nonetheless background noise is a common grumble when it comes to sitting in a plane for several hours at a time. The deafening hiss of the aircraft and the drone of the massive engines are both enough to make you go crazy, but luckily a solution has finally presented itself, noise cancelling headphones.

For years many frequent flyers have resorted to earplugs for solitude from noisy flights, but technology has finally graduated from the humble foam plug to the electronic noise cancelling headphone. It is hard to gauge how noisy an aircraft cabin is by the human ear due to the fact that the brain tends to compensate for ambient noise. But with noise cancelling headphones it becomes quite clear how noisy a modern aircraft is. Not only can this ambient noise pollution lead to hearing loss, the usual method of using earplugs to combat the noise, can promote ear infections and on a practical level, it does make for a fairly boring flight just listening to the thoughts in your head!

On the other hand noise cancelling headphones allow you to block out the sounds that you don’t want to hear while still being able to hear the ones that you do. The concept is fairly simple but extremey effective.

Not only can noise cancelling headphones be used to listen to music, they can also be used as simply for silence. In fact, noise cancelling headphones can simply nullify sound without playing any music, allowing the wearer to just sleep or read without the irritation of ambient noise. Basically the headphones are a sanctuary of peace and quiet, with the option to play music or any other audio that you may prefer.

Although the cost of noise cancelling headphones is still relatively high, this has to be expected with any new product. http://www.cancellingnoise.com expects that the headphones will become less expensive as more companies get involved in the market and apply downward pressure on prices. But for now, they remain a must have for regular air travelers.

The author is a regular contributor to http://www.cancellingnoise.com and permission to reproduce this article is given only on the basis that all links remain active and intact.