may have a programmable gain element 38 such that an increased gain will cause increase of the anti noise signal combined at output combiner 26 and a decreased gain will cause decrease of the anti noise signal combined at output combiner 26 as described in greater detail below with respect to fig4 and 5 the gain of programmable gain element 38 may vary based on a gain signal received from comparison block 42 for clarity of exposition the components of audio ic circuit 20 shown in fig2 and 3 depict components associated with only one audio channel however in personal audio devices employing stereo audio e g those with headphones many components of audio codec ic 20 shown in fig2 and 3 may be duplicated such that each of two audio channels e g one for a left side transducer and one for a right side transducer are independently capable of performing anc turning to fig4 a system is shown including left channel codec ic components 20 a right channel codec ic components 20 b and a comparison block 42 each of left channel codec ic components 20 a and right channel codec ic components 20 b may comprise some or all of the various components of codec ic 20 depicted in fig2 thus based on a respective reference microphone signal e g from reference microphone r l or r r a respective error microphone signal e g from error microphone e l or e r a respective near speech microphone signal e g from near speech microphone ns l or ns r.