What is the point of closed back headphones?

Closed Back Headphones allow for an isolated listening experience in situations where you require the elimination of ambient noise. This can be anywhere from a busy train or office environment, to a concert setting where the engineer needs to hear over the ambient room noise or audience sounds.

What is the difference between closed back and open back headphones?

Closed back headphones give you an isolated listening experience, preventing your audio leaking out for others to hear, all while cutting out much of the ambient noise in your surrounding environment so you can better hear your audio source. Open back headphones, on the other hand, allow that sound in and out to create a more accurate and natural feeling listening experience.

Are closed back headphones the same as noise cancelling?

No. Noise cancelling headphones feature active noise cancellation technologies to entirely dampen the sounds of your surrounding environment. Closed back headphones only passively isolate you from that environment. All noise cancelling headphones are closed back, but not all closed back headphones are noise cancelling.

Why are open back headphones a thing?

Open back headphones are designed to provide a more accurate and natural feeling recreation of your chosen audio source, more akin to being in the original source's vicinity, or listening in a room on stereo speakers.