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When you’re in a noisy environment—on an airplane, bus, or train, say—and you want to listen to music, you have three choices. You can turn up the volume so the headphones audio drowns out the background noise, you can use headphones that block some of that noise, or you can use noise-canceling headphones, which allow you to maintain a safe level of volume, while getting rid of much of the ambient sound. Obvious, the latter two options are much better for your hearing.

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