While on vacation, I brought my R09 recorder to record in-flight audio and also record how my spanking new AudioTechnica ATH-ANC7 noise-cancelling headphones. The recordings are of rather high quality and available in lossless format without any filtering. The only processing on the files are fade-in and fade-out and also reducing the volume of some of the clicks resulting from turning the noise-cancelling unit on and off.

The idea with this is that you can

• hear how well the ANC7's performed in a real scenario.
• use the recordings to simulate an in-flight scenario to test other noise-cancelling headphones.
• use the recordings for whatever purpose you want; they are in the public domain.

Please note:

• For best results, use high-quality headphones to listen to the recordings.
• You don't need to download all files. To get the best impression on how the ANC7's performed, try either boeing777-ath_anc7-test3 or airbus319-ath_anc7-test.
• The FLAC files are encoded using the reference libFLAC 1.2.1. By the time of writing, this is fairly new, so some players might have problems playing the files. If you hear skipping, pauses or the player stops after some seconds, you probably have to update the FLAC decoder library in your player, or reencode the files to a different FLAC version or format.
• There is quite a lot of rumbling low-end in the recording, as they have not been filtered at all. You might want to filter out some of the low-end, depending on what you use the recordings for.
• All files are mirrored at the Internet Archive.

Enjoy!

Recording equipment:
Roland/Edirol R-09, 24-bit 48kHz (max) setting
Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2 in-ear binaural microphones

Encoding information:
FLAC: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917, --best compression, 24-bit, 48kHz
MP3: LAME v3.97, ~166kbps VBR, 16-bit, 48kHz

File descriptions:
boeing777: China to Paris, Air France Boeing 777-300/ER, 2007-12-31
airbus319: Paris to Norway, Air France Airbus A319-111, 2007-12-31

airbus319-ambience-unfiltered (4:15)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (42MB), MP3 (5.7MB)
Recorded in the middle of airplane with not much going on. Some occational sounds from passengers.

airbus319-ath_anc7-test (1:27)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (14MB), MP3 (1.8MB)
0:17 - Putting on headphones (noise cancelling enabled)
0:36 - Disabling noise cancelling
0:46 - Removing headphones
0:51 - Putting on headphones
0:55 - Enabling noise cancelling
1:09 - Removing headphones
1:12 - Putting on headphones
1:14 - Removing headphones
1:16 - Putting on headphones
1:21 - Removing headphones

boeing777-ambience-unfiltered-pt1 (6:22)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (68MB), MP3 (8.4MB)
Recorded in the middle part of economy class. Flight attendants speaking. General sounds from passengers.

boeing777-ambience-unfiltered-pt2 (4:25)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (49MB), MP3 (5.9MB)
Food is being served. Lots of rumbling with plastic bags and sound of people eating and chatting.

boeing777-ambience-unfiltered-pt3 (1:57)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (20MB), MP3 (2.6MB)
Rather quiet. Not much going on.

boeing777-ambience-unfiltered-pt4 (7:08)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (72MB), MP3 (9.2MB)
Rather quiet. Not much going on.

boeing777-ath_anc7-test1 (0:50)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (7.8MB), MP3 (1.1MB)
0:11 - Putting on headphones (noise cancelling disabled)
0:17 - Enabling noise cancelling
0:43 - Disabling noise cancelling
0:47 - Removing headphones

boeing777-ath_anc7-test2 (2:24)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (25MB), MP3 (3.1MB)
0:08 - Putting on headphones (noise cancelling disabled)
0:17 - Enabling noise cancelling
0:23 - Connecting to in-flight video system
1:04 - Disabling noise cancelling (input audio remains connected)
1:17 - Enabling noise cancelling
1:39 - Removing headphones
1:50 - Putting on headphones
2:12 - Removing headphones

boeing777-ath_anc7-test3 (4:05)
Download: FLAC [mirror] (38MB), MP3 (5.1MB)
0:09 - Putting on headphones (noise cancelling disabled)
0:24 - Enabling noise cancelling
1:15 - Removing headphones
1:29 - Putting on headphones
1:35 - Disabling noise cancelling
1:48 - Enabling noise cancelling
1:56 - Removing headphones
2:08 - Putting on headphones with in-flight video system
2:40 - Disabling noise cancelling
2:46 - Enabling noise cancelling
3:15 - Removing headphones
3:23 - Putting on headphones
3:54 - Removing headphones

MD5sums for FLAC and MP3 files:

wow! Thank you so much. How is the audio quality on those?

Ah, sorry. The FLACs are 24-bit 48kHz, like the original recordings. MP3s are 16-bit 48kHz. I updated the description with this info as well. Also, the subjective or qualitative audio quality is rather high, if you ask me. I'm very happy with the performance of the in-ear microphones.

do you have any other headphones to compare the audio quality to? I mean, how do they compare to Sennheiser HD-555 for example or some other high end headphones without the noise canceling built in?

layer3 doesn't have a bit depth in the same way PCM does. these are some neat recordings, thanks for sharing.

Sorry, no. This was intended to be a source of high quality anbient airplane noise, so others could test noise-cancelling headphones in a near-realistic simulation. When searching for which NC headphones to get, there were never any actual results you could hear for yourself. Now there can be, as long as you have good binaural mics to record the result.

I see. Thanks for sharing the recordings.

This makes me wonder. Does anyone have a number for what percentage of ambient airplane noise energy is transmitted to the eardrum via bone/body conduction? I know that when wearing earplugs or IEMs, I can "hear" when I touch my elbow (much less my head) against a hard surface.