Controlling ambient sound volume

An apparatus comprising:

• an earpiece having a feed-forward microphone coupled to the environment outside the earpiece, a speaker coupled to the ear canal of the user when the earpiece is in use, a digital signal processor implementing feed-forward noise compensation filters between the feed-foward microphone and the speaker, and a memory storing an ordered sequence of sets of filters for use by the digital signal processor;
• wherein
• each of the sets of filters includes a feed-forward filter that provides a different frequency-dependent amount of sound pass-through or cancellation, which in combination with residual ambient sound reaching the ear results in a total insertion gain at the ear of a user,
• at least a subset of the sets of filters further providing the same response over at least 3 octaves in the human voice band, and adding ambient sound at different levels outside of the human voice band when compared to the insertion gain achieved in a full active noise reduction (ANR) mode.