Originally Posted by
Hot and Hi
It also largely depends whether you fly piston or turbines.
That's what I said, I just said it differently
And rumors Are that the anti-noise created by the ANR headset creates long-term damage to the ear.
This is total nonsense. It's amazing that any pilot, who is supposed to have at least some rudimentary understanding of technical matters, could even begin to believe such junk. If things sound less noisy it is because your eardrum is moving less. If your eardrum moves less then the wear and tear on it is also less. Can you find locations inside the earcup where the aggregate sound level is higher with the ANR on? Of course you can, because the ANR-generated anti-noise does not combine destructively with the noise at those points. But at the eardrum, where the anti-noise combines destructively with the noise, the sound pressure levels and hence the movement of the eardrum (and thus all internal ear structures) is greatly lessened. It's basic, high school (fifth form) physics. Don't you remember the water tray interference pattern experiment?
ANR headsets often don’t work at all with ‘doors open’. I think this is what the OP describes with “copilot window open” etc. The ANR system gets confused by the wind buffeting, and creates an unbearable artefact
noise. I personally had this with the Bose A20. I would assume that this is lesser of a problem when the ANR headset speakers are embedded in a helmet, but can’t speak from experience here.
This is highly variable. I have experienced mild buffeting issues with my DC ONE-X, but only when I stick my head out into the air stream, not something I really need to do. I can't speak to the Bose or Lightspeed, but the DC ONE-X has been vastly superior for me compared to regular, passive David Clarks in both Robinson and Airbus products, doors on or off, open or closed. I even had a chance to run the ONE-X's in a UH-60 for a week (thanks to a cool little mic impedance matching gadget). Again, greatly superior to the military supplied headsets. I will say that the MRGB whine was somewhat fatiguing, however the overall noise level was far more fatiguing than that when using the passive headsets. And the doors were open on that ship all week, too.
Things do get really weird, often unusable even, when you cup or cover the external noise sensing microphone with your hand. Not being a helmet user I wonder how the ANR helmet installations handle the placement of those microphones? That by itself may be the source of some of the reported issues.