Headphone questions - what to look for ??? (1 Viewer)

[Brian Elwood]

Besides comfort and Feq response - any else important?

I was at some local stores looking for inclosed Headphones and noticed that the wireless headphones had orse Freq response then the . . . .cirded ones.

Sony had some for $140 that (if memory serves me correctly) were 5-30,000. The few cordless ones were 20-20,000.

5-30,000 seems freaking good, am I right? Are there others numbers to look at?

 

[Dustin B]

You can pretty much safely ignore the frequency response listed on the package. Everything from cheap aweful sounding headphones to the best available will provide a frequency response spec of at least 20hz-20Khz. Very few people can hear above 20Khz and down around 20hz you don't hear it, you feel it, and headphones can't move enough air for you to feel it.

Spec wise the only thing on the box that will be of any value (and often won't be listed) is impedance. Low impedance means they will be easy to drive (ie portable players and soundcards will be able to drive them). High impedance means they will be hard to drive and likely won't sound good out of anything but a dedicated headphone amp. Another spec useful along this line is the headphones senstivity, but you'll rarely see that listed on the box either.

Also keep in mind headphone jacks in receivers and preamps are often after thoughts of the engineers and portable players tend to have their headphone jacks crippled to gain battery life.

Here are two good places to start reading about headphones:

http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=2
http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=4
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/