Noise Cancelling Ear Plugs and Webcam Audio: What They Do and Don't Change

The short answer

Noise cancelling ear plugs reduce the sound that reaches your ears. They do nothing to the sound that reaches your webcam's built-in microphone. If your goal is a cleaner voice signal on a video call or recording, ear plugs will not remove background noise from what your audience hears. The one exception is when the "ear plugs" are actually earbuds with their own microphones. In that case they can change your audio input, sometimes for the worse, as explained below.

What the term usually covers

Products sold as noise cancelling ear plugs generally fall into two groups. Both act on what you hear, not on what any microphone captures.

• Passive ear plugs (foam, silicone, wax or flanged designs): these block sound physically by sealing the ear canal. Their effect is usually described with an attenuation rating rather than electronic processing.
• Active noise cancelling (ANC) earbuds: these use microphones and processing to generate an opposing signal that reduces steady background sound inside your ear. Some are marketed as "sleep" or "noise cancelling" ear plugs.

How ear plugs can still affect your captured speech

Ear plugs don't filter the microphone signal, but they can indirectly change how you sound on a call:

• Your own voice sounds different to you. Sealing the ear canal produces the occlusion effect: your voice seems louder and boomier through bone conduction. This may lead you to speak more quietly than usual, which lowers your level relative to room noise at the webcam mic. This is an inference from the known effect, not a measured result for any specific product.
• You lose your sense of the room. With background noise blocked, it is harder to notice when a fan, traffic or a nearby conversation is loud enough to reach your microphone.
• You may not hear other participants. Passive plugs muffle laptop or monitor speakers, which makes them impractical for two-way calls unless you also use headphones.

When earbuds take over the microphone input

If you pair Bluetooth noise cancelling earbuds with your computer, the operating system or conferencing app may switch the input from the webcam mic to the earbuds' mic. On many systems, using a Bluetooth earbud microphone moves the connection to a headset or hands-free mode. That mode typically carries lower-bandwidth audio than the webcam mic, so your voice can sound thinner. Check the input device setting in both your system sound panel and the meeting app, and choose the webcam microphone explicitly if that is the source you want.

ANC in earbuds is a playback feature. Some earbuds also apply separate noise reduction to their outgoing microphone signal. These are distinct functions, and a product that does one may not do the other. No product specifications were supplied for this article, so it cannot say which models do either well.

What actually reduces noise in webcam audio

• Turn on the noise suppression built into your conferencing software, and test it with a recording or a test call.
• Reduce the distance between your mouth and the microphone. A closer source improves the ratio of speech to background noise. With a fixed webcam, that may mean repositioning the camera or yourself.
• Address the noise source itself: close windows, move away from fans or appliances, and soften hard, reflective surfaces where you can.
• If the webcam mic remains inadequate, consider a dedicated USB or headset microphone and select it as the input device.

Bottom line

Use noise cancelling ear plugs if you want to concentrate or protect your hearing in a noisy space. Don't expect them to improve the speech your webcam captures. If you wear earbuds during calls, confirm which microphone is selected, because an unintended switch to a Bluetooth earbud mic is a more likely cause of degraded call audio than anything the ear plugs do to your hearing.