If you've been looking into the best wireless earbuds or best noise cancelling headphones, you'll notice that they basically all feature a mode that enables you to not only turn off noise cancellation, but to actually amplify outside sounds. It's called different things by different manufacturers, such as Transparency Mode (Apple), Aware Mode (Bose) or Ambient Mode (Sony). So let's dig into why it's useful, and how it works.
The problem with noise cancellation is that sometimes you don't want to cancel external audio. You may need it for situational awareness, so you can hear whether a bus is coming or if your plane is boarding. Or you might just want to be able to hear your partner, your kids or your colleagues when they need you. Turning off ANC isn't enough to do that, because when you have headphones on or earbuds in, there is still a level of passive noise blocking. You could take the headphones off, or the earbuds out, but if you still want to listen to something, you could switch to Transparency Mode instead.
