8 ms·

The rise and rise of headphones

31 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

wyclif 11y ago
How do audiophile consumers rate and rank over-ear headphones? I'm wondering what criteria they use. I'm talking about good quality cans for listening to music, not fashion statements. I'm sure this has been discussed on HN before.
- rnmjr 11y ago
  Have a look at the information available at http://www.head-fi.org http://www.head-fi.org
  - arvinsim 11y ago
    This. I rely on this site since I don't have that good of an ear. To get my bang for buck, I check out their recommendations.
- rplst8 11y ago
  Generally speaking, the audiophile world falls into two camps. Those that think particular makes and models of audio electronics and speakers are somehow "magic" and those that simply want their systems to measure "flat". The first camp are the ones that used to put weights on their speakers, used "magic" green markers to color the vertical edge around the outside of a compact disc, and would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a plinth for their turntable or a magic tube driven preamp. The rest are simply concerned with scientific measurement of the system. Does it produce a reasonably flat sound in frequency and phase that remains undistorted at volumes at which they listen to music. The latter camp will highly rate headphones (or any other piece of audio equipment) that can produce a the full bandwidth of human hearing while keeping distortion low over a useful range of amplitude. Comfort, cost, and construction quality would also be considered in the ranking.
  - andy_ppp 11y ago
    There are also two sorts of hacker news commenters, those who divide people into two camps and those who don't. :-)
    - aaronem 11y ago
      Maybe, but in this case at least GP is not wrong to do so, merely lacking a little in nuance, in that on the "measurement" side, not everybody is looking for the flattest possible response. On the whole, though, there absolutely is a sort of "audiophile" who spends thousands and thousands of perfectly good dollars on completely ridiculous paraphernalia, because a combination of placebo effect and escalating commitment convinces him that it makes his music sound better. I don't have time to dig up a complete selection of background for you, but here's a good place to start, with a fair selection of jumping-off points for further study: http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-the-need-to-be-special/ http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-th... The major difference between the fellow described in this article, and the more usual sort of placebo audiophile, is that this fellow happened actually to be an electrical engineer, and thus capable of demonstrating to himself that he was full of it. Unfortunately, such acumen seems to be rather rare.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      There are also two types of Hacker News comments, those that whine and those that go meta. ... oh wait.
- comfycans 11y ago
  I'm not an audiophile (as I understand the perjorative, anyway) but I have spent a long time (20+ years) wearing headphones professionally. Yes, often at a desk, but also in the field or in a theater monitoring recording or playback. What I look for is simple: comfort, durability, isolation (in both directions), neutrality. In that order. Comfort - I swear by circumaural designs. Some people apparently don't have a problem with pads resting on the pinna, but I find this painful after an hour or two. Isolation is also worse with supra-aural designs. Durability - most headphones break quickly. The cables are usually the first to go, around the strain relief on either end. I've had some pairs that used a 1/8" minijack on one of the earpieces, making the cable replaceable - until the jack failed and couldn't be replaced without breaking open the earpiece. Good headphones will survive any reasonable drop; really good ones will survive being drop-kicked. Isolation - if you can't hear the signal over environmental noise, why bother monitoring? If you're recording or working in a theatrical environment, you don't want your headset audio leaking out either. In an office setting, nobody wants to hear your music, no matter how awesoem your jams are. Closed-ear designs are the way to go. Neutrality - Relatively flat frequency response. But this is way down the list of priorities for me. A great sounding set of headphones that breaks after 2 months, or is uncomfortable to wear, or doesn't block the sound of your workstation's fans is not a great set of headphones. tl;dr - Beyerdynamic DT250 is my headset of choice. My current pair is almost 15 years old and the only thing that's failed on them is the pleather on the headband, which has fallen off its fabric backing. Still on the original earpads and cable, and they're as good as the day I bought them. Stay away from consumer brands and models; like fast-fashion clothes, they are not built to last. (This is also why you should buy your cookware from a restaurant supply store, not williams-sonoma.)
  - radiowave 11y ago
    All true, but as far as listening to music goes, it's a pity the DT250s don't sound better - to me they make the bottom end sound like the proverbial bag of hammers. I tried the DT150s, which sound better but I didn't find nearly as comfortable over long periods, and eventually settled on a pair of DT770 Pro, which seem to me to be about perfect for comfort, and a good balance of sound quality and isolation.
  - 11y ago
- DenisM 11y ago
  I compare live performance of classical music at Seattle Symphony with good recordings of the same piece as heard on speakers and headphones. The most telling parts are about getting the details from faint instruments, especially at lower volumes. For example the opening part of Beethoven's 9th has very faint sound of violins, and it's often missing on consumer-grade speakers. Ideally I would also compare how wide is the stage and thus how well the instruments are separated, but I don't have the budget for that kind of equipment, if that exists at all. For my budget, I ended up getting a pair of studio monitors Event 2020bas for speakers, and Etimotic Research as in-ears headphones. YMMV.
  - scholia 11y ago
    This is a good system, though I tend to use my own MP3 player and a couple of albums that I know really well from my hi-fi (which has small but high-quality studio monitors). The key point is to listen for details and the separation between instruments. If you just listen to the music, the human ear/brain is far too good at filling in the missing bits... I'm not sure any headphones can give you a proper 3D sound stage of the sort that you can get with good loudspeakers (especially the LS3/5a). For that, I use recordings of Shostakovitch's string quartets to see how well I can locate (and distinguish between) four instruments. Although I'm not fond of it as music, Ravel's Bolero is also a good test track for headphones, because of the way the same theme is repeated by many different instruments. I use Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7b noise-cancelling headphones, but I don't think there's one headset that suits everyone, any more than there's one pair of speakers, or one car....
    - DenisM 11y ago
      Thank you, I'm off to look for Shostakovich quartets. Any particular recording you would advise? I mean a specific record of known-good quality, preferably on iTunes, Amazon, or similar. I often find myself spending a lot of time listening to different records of the same piece, just to make sure I get a good one.
      - scholia 11y ago
golergka 11y ago
I work professionally with audio to some extent, and I can hear the difference between 320 and wav in some cases (on my own home setup, of course) — but if a layperson asks, I'd advice them to buy Beats instead of professional monitor headphones which have better sound quality for less money. It's simple: if you can't tell the difference between 192 and 256, and are going to listen to Spotify stream anyway, it makes more sense to invest more into the appearance than in sound.
- Oletros 11y ago
  > It's simple: if you can't tell the difference between 192 and 256, and are going to listen to Spotify stream anyway, it makes more sense to invest more into the appearance than in sound. I'm unable to understand this kind of logic
  - coldtea 11y ago
    It's simple: a) Good headphones only bring marginally better sound over mediocre ones for most of the source material and format people hear (not to mention if you listen to pop hits, they're often mastered to sound good to mediocre headphones in the first place). b) Appearance matters. Being trendy and following fashion is good for your social life (yeah, other people are often that shallow: don't fight it, hack it to your benefit). c) For most people their social life is way more important than something like better frequency response. So optimize what's actually important to you, not what should be important in theory. Heck, I'm a heavy DAW user and I have AKG and AT monitor-grade headphones, but I'm still tempted to get a pair of Beats, a) to hear mixes through a headphone "in vogue" producers of pop/hip-hop/r&b optimize for, b) for the fashion part. (And no, "everybody has one" doesn't diminish the fashion factor, except to fashion snubs people who you'd want to avoid anyway. Fashion works better when you conform -- to put it another away, nobody was seen in a bad light wearing Nike because "tons of other people have Nikes").
    - widdershins 11y ago
      In my opinion bad headphones will have a bigger impact on the sound than the difference between a 192 and 320 mp3. Sure, on a 192 a practiced listener might be able to discern compression in things like cymbal washes, but bad headphones can wreck the whole balance of a track by boosting bass to ridiculous levels etc.
rplst8 11y ago
The sad part about the headphone market - especially over the ear models - is that the sound they produce is so far from natural, that no one knows what thinks actually sound like anymore. Beats headphones are a perfect example and are probably the worst offender of them all. This ends up affecting everyone - even those of us who choose a pair of headphones that are "flat" or better at being acoustically transparent. Just as recording and mastering engineers learned to change the sound of their albums to sound better on small little "boom boxes" in the 80's and early 90's, today they alter the sound so they work on these grossly inaccurate headphones.
- degenerate 11y ago
  Earlier this year I was looking for the flattest (least "colored") pair of headphones I could get for under $100 and after lots of reading finally went with the ATH-M40x. You all might have seen this model headphone go on sale now and again with mic bundles on Amazon/B&H, and wondered if these headphones are any good. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udLoAV7YmjA&feature=youtu.be&t=83 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udLoAV7YmjA&feature=youtu.be...] (linked to 83s) really puts into perspective how muddled - aka "colored" - the popular pairs of headphones can sound. I was skeptical of how this works - how do you record what the headphones sound like? This must surely be fake. However here is the making-of video and it really put into perspective for me how detailed sound engineering can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnK1Gq7txYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnK1Gq7txYA
  - falcolas 11y ago
    If looks don't bother you too much, you may wish to look into the Koss PortaPro headphones. Sub $50, they look terrible, but sound remarkably good.
    - bsenftner 11y ago
      Second that recommendation. Best sound. Terrible look.
- coldtea 11y ago
dharma1 11y ago
What I would like are in-ears that almost completely block outside noise. With some better foam to physically block out the noise, and better noise canceling algorithms, maybe with deep learning. Saw this for cars but nothing for headphones yet http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/human-factors/mitsubishi-quiets-car-noise-for-your-ohsoimportant-phone-calls http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/huma...
- rjsw 11y ago
  I have a set of Etymotic Research earphones, they don't do noise cancelling, all the noise reduction is from the design of the plug. [1] https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html
- 4ad 11y ago
  There are a ton of IEMs like that. Please see /r/headphones and the various wikis in the sidebar.
- randlet 11y ago
  I use etymotic in-ear headphones with the two-flange tips (I prefer the rubber flanges over foam) and they do a remarkable job at isolating from external noise, allowing me to listen to music at a quiet (read non hearing loss inducing) level.
- falcolas 11y ago
  Shure and Westone both offer great IEMs (in-ear monitors) which have foam tips that block around 30db of external sound, and offer good-to-great representation of the source material. http://www.headphone.com/collections/in-ear http://www.headphone.com/collections/in-ear
bluedino 11y ago
A few years back I worked in an open office setting and I went a little headphone crazy. I bought 4 pairs of over the ear headphones, and 5 pairs of in-ear headphones. I read all the forums and reviews. I even bought two headphone amps! I ended up with a pair for home, pair for travel, pair for work, and a pair that go in my laptop case. I gave the other pairs to friends and family. Headphone preference is just as much a personal preference as it is picking the 'best' ones. Some just aren't comfortable on certain shape/size heads or ears. You might just not like how certain pairs sound.
tasdev 11y ago
I bought a pair of B&W P7s for $349 (AUD, RRP is $649). I was fortunate to get mates rates on a clearance item. Had been thinking about it for a while. The sound quality is incredible and you certainly can justify spending money here if you're at all passionate about audio. I listen to a lot of lossless with them and they sound superb. Conversely, from listening to Beats I've found them to be overly cheap feeling and the sound quality isn't on par with their competition.

31 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

How do audiophile consumers rate and rank over-ear headphones? I'm wondering what criteria they use. I'm talking about good quality cans for listening to music, not fashion statements. I'm sure this has been discussed on HN before.

rnmjr 11y ago
Have a look at the information available at http://www.head-fi.org http://www.head-fi.org
- arvinsim 11y ago
  This. I rely on this site since I don't have that good of an ear. To get my bang for buck, I check out their recommendations.
rplst8 11y ago
Generally speaking, the audiophile world falls into two camps. Those that think particular makes and models of audio electronics and speakers are somehow "magic" and those that simply want their systems to measure "flat". The first camp are the ones that used to put weights on their speakers, used "magic" green markers to color the vertical edge around the outside of a compact disc, and would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a plinth for their turntable or a magic tube driven preamp. The rest are simply concerned with scientific measurement of the system. Does it produce a reasonably flat sound in frequency and phase that remains undistorted at volumes at which they listen to music. The latter camp will highly rate headphones (or any other piece of audio equipment) that can produce a the full bandwidth of human hearing while keeping distortion low over a useful range of amplitude. Comfort, cost, and construction quality would also be considered in the ranking.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  There are also two sorts of hacker news commenters, those who divide people into two camps and those who don't. :-)
  - aaronem 11y ago
    Maybe, but in this case at least GP is not wrong to do so, merely lacking a little in nuance, in that on the "measurement" side, not everybody is looking for the flattest possible response. On the whole, though, there absolutely is a sort of "audiophile" who spends thousands and thousands of perfectly good dollars on completely ridiculous paraphernalia, because a combination of placebo effect and escalating commitment convinces him that it makes his music sound better. I don't have time to dig up a complete selection of background for you, but here's a good place to start, with a fair selection of jumping-off points for further study: http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-the-need-to-be-special/ http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-th... The major difference between the fellow described in this article, and the more usual sort of placebo audiophile, is that this fellow happened actually to be an electrical engineer, and thus capable of demonstrating to himself that he was full of it. Unfortunately, such acumen seems to be rather rare.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    There are also two types of Hacker News comments, those that whine and those that go meta. ... oh wait.
comfycans 11y ago
I'm not an audiophile (as I understand the perjorative, anyway) but I have spent a long time (20+ years) wearing headphones professionally. Yes, often at a desk, but also in the field or in a theater monitoring recording or playback. What I look for is simple: comfort, durability, isolation (in both directions), neutrality. In that order. Comfort - I swear by circumaural designs. Some people apparently don't have a problem with pads resting on the pinna, but I find this painful after an hour or two. Isolation is also worse with supra-aural designs. Durability - most headphones break quickly. The cables are usually the first to go, around the strain relief on either end. I've had some pairs that used a 1/8" minijack on one of the earpieces, making the cable replaceable - until the jack failed and couldn't be replaced without breaking open the earpiece. Good headphones will survive any reasonable drop; really good ones will survive being drop-kicked. Isolation - if you can't hear the signal over environmental noise, why bother monitoring? If you're recording or working in a theatrical environment, you don't want your headset audio leaking out either. In an office setting, nobody wants to hear your music, no matter how awesoem your jams are. Closed-ear designs are the way to go. Neutrality - Relatively flat frequency response. But this is way down the list of priorities for me. A great sounding set of headphones that breaks after 2 months, or is uncomfortable to wear, or doesn't block the sound of your workstation's fans is not a great set of headphones. tl;dr - Beyerdynamic DT250 is my headset of choice. My current pair is almost 15 years old and the only thing that's failed on them is the pleather on the headband, which has fallen off its fabric backing. Still on the original earpads and cable, and they're as good as the day I bought them. Stay away from consumer brands and models; like fast-fashion clothes, they are not built to last. (This is also why you should buy your cookware from a restaurant supply store, not williams-sonoma.)
- radiowave 11y ago
  All true, but as far as listening to music goes, it's a pity the DT250s don't sound better - to me they make the bottom end sound like the proverbial bag of hammers. I tried the DT150s, which sound better but I didn't find nearly as comfortable over long periods, and eventually settled on a pair of DT770 Pro, which seem to me to be about perfect for comfort, and a good balance of sound quality and isolation.
- 11y ago
DenisM 11y ago
I compare live performance of classical music at Seattle Symphony with good recordings of the same piece as heard on speakers and headphones. The most telling parts are about getting the details from faint instruments, especially at lower volumes. For example the opening part of Beethoven's 9th has very faint sound of violins, and it's often missing on consumer-grade speakers. Ideally I would also compare how wide is the stage and thus how well the instruments are separated, but I don't have the budget for that kind of equipment, if that exists at all. For my budget, I ended up getting a pair of studio monitors Event 2020bas for speakers, and Etimotic Research as in-ears headphones. YMMV.
- scholia 11y ago
  This is a good system, though I tend to use my own MP3 player and a couple of albums that I know really well from my hi-fi (which has small but high-quality studio monitors). The key point is to listen for details and the separation between instruments. If you just listen to the music, the human ear/brain is far too good at filling in the missing bits... I'm not sure any headphones can give you a proper 3D sound stage of the sort that you can get with good loudspeakers (especially the LS3/5a). For that, I use recordings of Shostakovitch's string quartets to see how well I can locate (and distinguish between) four instruments. Although I'm not fond of it as music, Ravel's Bolero is also a good test track for headphones, because of the way the same theme is repeated by many different instruments. I use Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7b noise-cancelling headphones, but I don't think there's one headset that suits everyone, any more than there's one pair of speakers, or one car....
  - DenisM 11y ago
    Thank you, I'm off to look for Shostakovich quartets. Any particular recording you would advise? I mean a specific record of known-good quality, preferably on iTunes, Amazon, or similar. I often find myself spending a lot of time listening to different records of the same piece, just to make sure I get a good one.
    - scholia 11y ago

golergka 11y ago

I work professionally with audio to some extent, and I can hear the difference between 320 and wav in some cases (on my own home setup, of course) — but if a layperson asks, I'd advice them to buy Beats instead of professional monitor headphones which have better sound quality for less money. It's simple: if you can't tell the difference between 192 and 256, and are going to listen to Spotify stream anyway, it makes more sense to invest more into the appearance than in sound.

Oletros 11y ago
> It's simple: if you can't tell the difference between 192 and 256, and are going to listen to Spotify stream anyway, it makes more sense to invest more into the appearance than in sound. I'm unable to understand this kind of logic
- coldtea 11y ago
  It's simple: a) Good headphones only bring marginally better sound over mediocre ones for most of the source material and format people hear (not to mention if you listen to pop hits, they're often mastered to sound good to mediocre headphones in the first place). b) Appearance matters. Being trendy and following fashion is good for your social life (yeah, other people are often that shallow: don't fight it, hack it to your benefit). c) For most people their social life is way more important than something like better frequency response. So optimize what's actually important to you, not what should be important in theory. Heck, I'm a heavy DAW user and I have AKG and AT monitor-grade headphones, but I'm still tempted to get a pair of Beats, a) to hear mixes through a headphone "in vogue" producers of pop/hip-hop/r&b optimize for, b) for the fashion part. (And no, "everybody has one" doesn't diminish the fashion factor, except to fashion snubs people who you'd want to avoid anyway. Fashion works better when you conform -- to put it another away, nobody was seen in a bad light wearing Nike because "tons of other people have Nikes").
  - widdershins 11y ago
    In my opinion bad headphones will have a bigger impact on the sound than the difference between a 192 and 320 mp3. Sure, on a 192 a practiced listener might be able to discern compression in things like cymbal washes, but bad headphones can wreck the whole balance of a track by boosting bass to ridiculous levels etc.

rplst8 11y ago

The sad part about the headphone market - especially over the ear models - is that the sound they produce is so far from natural, that no one knows what thinks actually sound like anymore. Beats headphones are a perfect example and are probably the worst offender of them all. This ends up affecting everyone - even those of us who choose a pair of headphones that are "flat" or better at being acoustically transparent. Just as recording and mastering engineers learned to change the sound of their albums to sound better on small little "boom boxes" in the 80's and early 90's, today they alter the sound so they work on these grossly inaccurate headphones.

degenerate 11y ago
Earlier this year I was looking for the flattest (least "colored") pair of headphones I could get for under $100 and after lots of reading finally went with the ATH-M40x. You all might have seen this model headphone go on sale now and again with mic bundles on Amazon/B&H, and wondered if these headphones are any good. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udLoAV7YmjA&feature=youtu.be&t=83 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udLoAV7YmjA&feature=youtu.be...] (linked to 83s) really puts into perspective how muddled - aka "colored" - the popular pairs of headphones can sound. I was skeptical of how this works - how do you record what the headphones sound like? This must surely be fake. However here is the making-of video and it really put into perspective for me how detailed sound engineering can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnK1Gq7txYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnK1Gq7txYA
- falcolas 11y ago
  If looks don't bother you too much, you may wish to look into the Koss PortaPro headphones. Sub $50, they look terrible, but sound remarkably good.
  - bsenftner 11y ago
    Second that recommendation. Best sound. Terrible look.
coldtea 11y ago

dharma1 11y ago

What I would like are in-ears that almost completely block outside noise. With some better foam to physically block out the noise, and better noise canceling algorithms, maybe with deep learning. Saw this for cars but nothing for headphones yet http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/human-factors/mitsubishi-quiets-car-noise-for-your-ohsoimportant-phone-calls http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/huma...

rjsw 11y ago
I have a set of Etymotic Research earphones, they don't do noise cancelling, all the noise reduction is from the design of the plug. [1] https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones.html
4ad 11y ago
There are a ton of IEMs like that. Please see /r/headphones and the various wikis in the sidebar.
randlet 11y ago
I use etymotic in-ear headphones with the two-flange tips (I prefer the rubber flanges over foam) and they do a remarkable job at isolating from external noise, allowing me to listen to music at a quiet (read non hearing loss inducing) level.
falcolas 11y ago
Shure and Westone both offer great IEMs (in-ear monitors) which have foam tips that block around 30db of external sound, and offer good-to-great representation of the source material. http://www.headphone.com/collections/in-ear http://www.headphone.com/collections/in-ear

bluedino 11y ago

A few years back I worked in an open office setting and I went a little headphone crazy. I bought 4 pairs of over the ear headphones, and 5 pairs of in-ear headphones. I read all the forums and reviews. I even bought two headphone amps! I ended up with a pair for home, pair for travel, pair for work, and a pair that go in my laptop case. I gave the other pairs to friends and family. Headphone preference is just as much a personal preference as it is picking the 'best' ones. Some just aren't comfortable on certain shape/size heads or ears. You might just not like how certain pairs sound.

tasdev 11y ago

I bought a pair of B&W P7s for $349 (AUD, RRP is $649). I was fortunate to get mates rates on a clearance item. Had been thinking about it for a while. The sound quality is incredible and you certainly can justify spending money here if you're at all passionate about audio. I listen to a lot of lossless with them and they sound superb. Conversely, from listening to Beats I've found them to be overly cheap feeling and the sound quality isn't on par with their competition.