What is ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation)?

What is ENC? You might be familiar with ANC, or Active Noise Cancellation, for your headphones, but have you heard of ENC? To start, ENC stands for Environmental Noise Cancellation. This technology is commonly found in headphones with microphones and is not a widely used term. ENC is commonly presented alongside ANC in blogs and videos about headphones and mics nowadays, but ANC and ENC are not the same thing.

ANC is for your own personal hearing; when you’re listing to your music or you’re watching the big reveal scene of your favorite movie, ANC takes the noise around you and tries to reduce it so that you can hear your music or movies better. There are a multitude of ways to do so, but the most known type uses a microphone and speaker to invert the soundwaves around you so that it minimizes the noise. In other words, if your noise is at +5, the technology will create a soundwave at -5, and what you’ll hear through your speaker is 0.

On the other end, ENC is for the hearing of whoever you’re talking to. Similar to ANC, ENC uses a two-microphone, noise reduction technology, but it does so for the benefit of the other line.

This technology is a great innovation for so many situations. In office settings or call centers, customers won’t hear the bustle or murmur of the people talking right next to you. When taking interviews in a café or from home, your interviewers won’t hear the laughter of the kids behind your screen.

One thing to note is that all audio wear is made differently. With true wireless/Bluetooth earbuds, they may boast ENC or noise-cancellation technology, but since the microphone might be placed much farther from your mouth than it would be with a headset with a boom mic, the voice clarity may not be as great.