Since the pillows cover over your ears they dampen ambient noise but even on max volume some videos and mp3s were hard to hear over ambient noise like trying to wash dishes while listening to a podcast

The other big problem is that they didn't do a great job of blocking out ambient noise (for some reason I don't understand, gyms love to blast crappy music over their speaker system), so when the people in the show were speaking with low voices, I could barely hear them even the with the volume turned all the way up, and then loud noises were way too loud, and I had to keep adjusting the volume

If there's ambient noise, you will have trouble hearing what's coming through the earphones.