What Is Transparency Mode? All About The Headphones & Earbuds Feature

If you've spent time shopping for earbuds or headphones during the past several years, you've probably seen that many brands advertise a feature called transparency mode. First popularized by Apple's AirPods Pro, today you'll see it advertised by brands including Bose, Sony, Samsung, and more. To the uninitiated, the words "transparency mode" can seem a bit opaque. What exactly is transparency mode? What has it got to do with audio playback? Moreover, what makes it so useful that every brand now feels the need to advertise it?

Simply put, transparency mode allows you to hear what's going on around you, even when you've got your headphones on or your earbuds in. It uses microphones on the earbuds or headphones to pick up the noises around you and pipe them into the earpiece alongside whatever other audio is playing. You can therefore listen to a podcast while walking through a busy street or jam out to your favorite tunes at work without missing the things your coworkers say to you. If you've ever seen someone ordering coffee with two earbuds still firmly planted in their ears, you probably saw transparency mode in action. However, there's much more to say about this nifty little feature – here's what transparency mode is, how it differs from similar technologies, and how it might help people in the future.

You'll often see transparency mode marketed alongside active noise cancelation (ANC) features on earbuds and headphones, which can make it difficult for some consumers to distinguish between the two. Additionally, high-end, audiophile grade equipment is often marketed as being "transparent," which has nothing to do with transparency mode. Here's the differences between these terms.

Transparency mode refers to the ability of some headphones and earbuds to pipe sound from your surroundings into your ears using onboard microphones. This allows the user to hear what's going on around them without needing to remove the earbuds or headphones.

ANC works by taking in noise from the environment around you, using the same onboard microphones, then creating an "anti-noise" audio signal that's the exact opposite of what the microphones hear and piping it into the headphones. This results in the user being able to hear less of their environment. To understand it, think about how a negative number counteracts the same positive number. They cancel each other out and you end up with zero. Active noise cancelation is similar.

Audio transparency, meanwhile, is a term used by audio experts to refer to the quality of a sound signal. Headphones and other playback devices may qualify as "transparent" if they can play audio without any distortion or alteration from the source signal. Think of it like hearing what the artist wants you to hear.

Transparency mode has become a familiar feature thanks to the popularity of Apple's AirPods line of true wireless earbuds. With such devices ubiquitous, it's common for people to want the ability to leave their earbuds in their ears for extended periods of time. However, without transparency mode this would be more difficult, as you'd have to remove your earbuds to hear traffic around you, have conversations, or otherwise interact with audio sources in your environment. Transparency mode was built for these situations.

For example, if you work an office job where listening to music in your headphones is okay, but where you must still be available to speak with your colleagues, transparency mode allows you to do both. You'll be able to hear that new album that's getting you through the workday, but if a coworker comes around to chat or ask for something, you'll hear their voice, too. Letting outside sound in is useful in far more than just work environments. If you enjoy wearing earbuds while you run, cycle, or walk through busy areas, transparency mode will help you keep aware of car traffic and the people around you.

Additionally, some earbuds and headphones, including the Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Generation and Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro, have adaptive transparency modes that will smartly adjust the volume and intensity of transparency based on your environment, actions, location, and more. These modes can help you stay immersed in your music or other audio while still remaining aware of your surroundings, which makes them perfect for situations like riding public transit, walking outdoors, and so forth.

Transparency mode is a very useful technology, and if you're an avid user, you might like to know how to get the most out of it. The first thing you should consider about transparency mode is that it relies on the microphones built into your earbuds or headphones. If these microphones are blocked or clogged, transparency mode won't work as well. Therefore, if you regularly wear hats that cover your ears, these will almost certainly cover the microphones on your earbuds or headphones and you won't be able to hear the world around you as well. Even long hair can be a problem in this regard, since materials passing over the microphones are likely to be picked up as distortion.

The quality of the external microphones also matters greatly to the quality of transparency mode, so make sure to choose your devices carefully. In budget-grade headphones or earbuds, poor microphone quality will translate into far less detail and accuracy from transparency mode. This is likely why some companies that make budget headphones opt not to have transparency mode at all. For example, SlashGear's budget pick for the best Bluetooth headphones in 2024 are the Audio Technica ATH-M50xBT2, which have excellent sound but eschew ANC or transparency mode to keep the price low.

Lastly, you should do a deep dive through the settings of your AirPods or other earbuds and headphones, which often allow you to customize transparency mode.

While active noise cancelation and transparency mode has been a binary choice for some time, new breakthroughs in AI are powering the next generation of earbuds and headphones for which both features will work simultaneously. Samsung's newly released Galaxy Buds3 Pro have a new mode in between ANC and transparency mode called Adaptive Noise Control. When a user selects this setting, the earbuds will generally block sound using ANC, but will allow sounds such as police and ambulance sirens to be heard. It's easy to see how this feature will expand in the future. 

Sony's WH-1000XM5 headphones aren't quite as impressive, but they have a smart mode called Adaptive Sound Control that will switch between transparency and ANC modes based on your activity and location. They also have a transparency mode setting that detects speech, pausing audio and ANC, so that you can have a conversation. 

As the technology that underlies both active noise cancelation and transparency mode continues to improve, and as machine learning and AI do the same, we're likely to see these features become more customizable to adapt to each person's particular needs. For example, headphones and earbuds will likely be able to amplify certain frequencies for people who have some hearing loss, as similar features already exist that must be set up more manually. In the meantime, plain old transparency mode is still a remarkably useful feature for everyday life.