A system for providing binaural telepresence includes two communication devices, and two sets of active noise reducing headphones having an active noise-cancelling mode and an active hear-through mode, coupled to the respective communication devices and configured to provide left and right feed-forward microphone signals to the communication devices. The first communication device is configured to transmit the first left and right feed-forward microphone signals to the second communication device. The second communication device is configured to provide the first left and right feed-forward microphone signals to the second set of headphones. The second set of headphones are configured to activate their noise-cancelling mode while filtering the first left and right feed-forward microphone signals so that a user of the second set of headphones hears ambient noise from the environment of the first set of headphones, so that the user hears the ambient noise from the first set of headphones with ambient naturalness.
