How Bone Conduction Headphones Work (and When You Should Use Them)

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I love my bone conduction headphones. I wear them when I’m running so that I can hear traffic approaching. I also love them for noisy environments where I put in earplugs. Since the headphones don’t require my ear canal to be open, I can use earplugs and still be able to hear my bone-conducted music. So what’s going on with this strange technology, and what are the downsides? I’ll explain. 

How bone conduction works

Normally, when we hear a sound from something around us, the sound waves travel through air until they hit our eardrum, located inside the ear canal. The eardrum vibrates in time with the music—really, the frequency of the sound—and transmits that vibration to tiny bones located in what’s called our middle ear. 

(From there, vibrations are transmitted to the inner ear, including the cochlea, where they are translated into signals sent to our brain and then further processed into our perception of sound. All of that is outside the scope of this article, though. We’re just interested in how the vibrations get from our headphones to the middle ear.) 

There’s another way to vibrate those middle ear bones, though: you can do it directly, by sending vibrations right through the head. According to legend, Beethoven would bite his conducting wand and hold it against his piano, so that he could “hear” through his teeth. You can try this right now, with any old earbuds: turn on some music and hold your earbud’s speaker against your tooth. You’ll hear the music. Wild, huh? 

We actually hear bone-conducted sounds all the time. Every time you speak, you’re hearing your own voice through bone (and soft tissue) conduction and through the air. (That’s probably why your recorded voice sounds so different from what you’re used to hearing when you talk.) Stick your fingers in your ears and speak out loud, and you’ll hear just the bone-conducted portion. 

Bone conduction headphones take advantage of this phenomenon. Like all headphones, they have tiny little speakers. But instead of pointing those little speakers into our ear canals to vibrate the air and then our eardrums, the headphones are designed to press their little speakers against a bone—usually the cheekbone right in front of the ear. Technically they are also conducting the sound through soft tissues like skin, muscle, and fat, but the bones do a really good job and are what the technology is named after.

Are Shokz and other “bone conduction” headphones really conducting sound through bone? 

Yes, they work through actual bone conduction, but not only bone conduction. Some of the sound gets transmitted through the air as well. 

Because people don’t always believe this—I came across some Reddit threads where people were arguing over whether bone conduction is bullshit—here are two little experiments you can do with bone conduction headphones to understand what’s going on. 

First, wear them normally. The little speakers will be on the bony spot right in front of your ear. Turn on some music. Enjoy. Now pull the speakers gently away from your head, so they’re no longer making contact. Yes, you will still hear the music. But, it will be tinny and quiet, compared to when you were wearing them normally. 

Now, wear them normally again, but plug your ears with your fingers (or, if you like, a handy pair of earplugs.) The sound will be different—a bit deeper, is how I would describe it, but I’m no audiophile. It almost seems like it gets louder. The headphones definitely don’t need air-based access to your eardrums to get their sound through. 

Is bone conduction safe for your ears? 

Bone conduction is neither better or worse for your ears than traditional headphones, because ultimately the same thing happens in each. Your cochlea (which is the part of your ear that’s damaged in the most common types of hearing loss) still receives the vibrations either way. Too-loud bone conduction headphones are bad for you, just like too-loud regular headphones.

There is one way that bone conduction headphones can be better for your ears, as I hinted above. If you’re in a noisy environment, you can wear earplugs to protect your ears from the loud sounds around you, and you can wear bone-conduction headphones to deliver a bit of music to fill the silence. 

I started wearing the earplugs-and-headphones combo this summer when I was doing a lot of outdoor workouts near a loud air conditioner, and also realized that the sound of dropping the bar was actually pretty darn loud as well (dropping the bar is a routine part of olympic weightlifting). So I got some Loop earplugs, and found that not only could I still hear my music through my Aftershokz Aeropex Mini (an older version of what is now the Shokz OpenRun Mini), I was able to turn the volume to a near-minimum and still hear it just fine. Overall my ears are getting a lot less noise exposure, so that’s a win-win.

What are the downsides of bone conduction headphones? 

There aren’t any health or safety downsides (as we discussed above), but you aren’t going to get pristine sound quality through bone conduction headphones. 

Some are better than others, and you should always check out reviews and try headphones in person if you want to make a buying decision based on sound quality. But in general, the upside of bone-conduction headphones is also their downside. Since Shokz and the like don’t block out ambient sounds, the sound that reaches your ear is a mix of the music you’re playing on purpose, and the noises of the world around you. 

When I wear my Aftershokz with earplugs, I don’t get great sound quality that way, either. Just like your voice sounds different with your ears plugged, the sound mix of bone conduction plus earplugs is not quite the same as what you’d hear through a good pair of quality headphones. 

Personally, I find these minor downsides are balanced by the other advantages that bone conduction headphones provide. I don’t need to hear my podcasts in crystal-clear audio while I’m running, I just need to be able to listen in while still being able to hear what’s going on around me. When I do want to listen to music in high fidelity, I do that at home, with a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones.