Crackling sound heard in noisy environments

Excessively noisy environments such as airplanes taking off, concerts, emergency sirens, and construction zones (among others) can overwhelm the microphones used to monitor external frequencies (part of the ANC technology) causing the headphones to crackle or distort.
Be aware, this can also happen in Quiet and Aware mode.

For example, have you ever held your phone too close to your mouth or talked loudly during a phone call? When you do, your voice can sound distorted to the person you are talking to. When you move your mouth away from the phone and talk at a normal level, the sound of your voice returns to normal. This is similar to what is happening when exceptionally loud noises occur in the environment where the headphones are used.

It is important to know these loud environments will not damage the headphones and there is no lasting damage to the product. If you would like to reduce the amount of times this happens we recommend doing your best to move away from the loud noises. For example if you are flying choosing a seat further away from the engines will reduce this effect.