Noise cancelling headphones can cancel noise without any music playing. It's not 100%, but they'll get rid of like 80% of the background noise without playing

Noise cancelling headphones can cancel noise without any music playing. It's not 100%, but they'll get rid of like 80% of the background noise without playing anything. To get that last 20% yeah you need something playing to help mask it(even at an extremely low volume). Sometimes I wear mine with nothing playing while at work just to get rid of random office chatter.