Silence in the city: Noise-cancelling headphones and soundproof work booths to achieve a quiet day

Noise pollution makes stress levels spike — so how can we lead a quiet life? Katie Strick picks the best hush tech
Beats by Dr Dre

They say silence is golden, but at the moment it’s looking white as a cloud. Or two little clouds, to be specific.

Apple’s new noise-cancelling wonder-buds, AirPods Pro (£249, apple.com), have me traversing the capital in a disconcerting state of peace: the chatter of my office deskmates is numbed, if not gone entirely; motorbikes are a distant hum; and — most impressively — I can finally hear my podcast over the rattle and screech of the Circle line.

London has never sounded so good. I’m trying a day of seeking silence in a city that’s in the midst of a noise epidemic. A BBC report found parts of the Tube to be “loud enough to damage people’s hearing” and the World Health Organisation has called noise pollution the next big public health issue.

According to the European Environment Agency, it causes 10,000 premature deaths a year, mainly due to the release of the stress hormone cortisol.

Mercifully, the techsperts are listening. The upgraded AirPods are Apple’s first earphones with active, real-time noise cancellation, detecting outside din and countering them with “anti-noise”. According to developers, they adjust to the noise around you 200 times a second. “So good it’s almost annoying,” say critics — and my boss agrees. She now has to tap my shoulder every time she wants my attention — no name-calling could burst my quiet bubble.

The tech titans are close on Apple’s heels: silence is the hottest new commodity. Amazon’s first wireless earphones, Echo Buds (£120, amazon.co.uk), have been fitted with Bose’s trailblazing noise-reduction technology; Skullcandy released its magnetic noise-cancelling Method ANC (£90, skullcandy.co.uk) buds this week; and Beats, too, has released its noise-cancelling headphones, Solo Pro (£269.95, beatsbydre.com), which adjust their sound-blocking for leakage caused by head movement, hair and earrings.

There’s more to hush tech than headphones. Mindfulness app Calm has teamed up with start-up ROOM to create a soundproof booth (£3,295, room.com) for escaping office commotion — and Apple has introduced a feature to its health-tech offering on the Apple Watch: a Noise app (free, apple.com), which measures sound levels and warns you if they could cause hearing loss.

It takes just minutes to become obsessive. Sitting at my desk ranges from 45 to 56 decibels, the canteen records 63, Pret scores 73. “Can we go to Leon instead? I don’t want to damage my hearing,” I ask a friend at lunch. After work, I choose the bus. The Circle line’s highs of 86 will send my Watch into haywire (an hour and 45 minutes a day at this level can cause temporary hearing loss, the app says).

Then the big question: where for dinner? I ask SoundPrint (free, soundprint.co), an app that crowdsources noise levels to show you the quietest spots to eat. Apparently my nearest sanctuary is the London Tea Exchange near Moorgate.

The good news is users have deemed it acceptably quiet at 66 decibels; the bad news is it’s 5.33 miles away, which requires a not-so-quiet trip on the Central line.

Luckily I’ve got my AirPods and white noise apps to help me block out the clatter (and nod off later). Atmosphere (atmosphere.en.uptodown.com; free) offers audio effects from streams to beach sounds; White Noise Lite (free, tmsoft.com) features rain and wind; and myNoise (free, mynoise.net) lets me choose which colour noise I want to listen to, from rough browns to steady pinks.

Pink is the peaceful colour of the moment. Indiegogo project HeadRest (£193, indiegogo.com) — a high-tech headband promising to improve your sleep — plays microsecond bursts of pink noise through bone conduction speakers, while QuietOn’s earplugs (£160, amazon.co.uk) sit inside your ear to block out up to 40 decibels and come with foam eartips next to a white-gold logo.

Maybe silence is golden after all.

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