Buying headphones is more difficult than you think. Nowadays you have so many different options that you can no longer see the forest for the trees. Which one should you have? We explain what is involved in the purchase of headphones.
Tip 1: Function
A visit to a store with a wide range of headphones often produces more questions than answers. How can you choose from dozens of different headphones, which also vary greatly in price? The cheapest headphones will cost you a few euros, the most expensive models are easily a few hundred euros. Before you can choose a pair of headphones, it is useful to know what the function of the headphones is. If you only use the headphones at home with your hi-fi set, you are faced with different choices than when you are looking for headphones for your smartphone.
If you’re going for the best sound quality and don’t want to spend hundreds of euros, wired headphones are still the best option in most cases. If you want to be more flexible, you can look for wireless headphones. For musicians or travelers things like noise isolation and robustness are important, and if you want to enjoy deep bass from your headphones, you may need to look for headphones with more than one driver.
Tip 2: Models
You can distinguish headphones into two types: large headphones that you put over your ears and that are connected to each other via a fixed construction, and small earplugs that you push in or against your ear canal. In the latter variant, the plugs are in most cases not connected to each other, but are controlled via two individual cables. A well-known example are the earplugs that come with the iPhone or androidsmartphone are included.
The advantage of this type of earplugs is that they can be obtained from a few euros, the disadvantage is often that the sound – and especially basses – are not reproduced very well. Another form of earplugs are so-called in-ear plugs. These are often plastic caps that you actually push into your ear canal. When purchasing in-ear headphones, you often get several caps that all have a different fit and are sometimes made of a different material. The sound of in-ear headphones is often better because the tips slide into your ear canal.
In-ear earphones for musicians
For musicians, there are special in-ear plugs on the market that are custom-made and specifically aimed at which instrument you play. For singers, for example, low and high frequencies are filtered so that you hear your own voice better in the headphones. These in-ears slide deeper into your ear canal than normal in-ears and are often used in combination with a beltpack. You put the cable of your headphones in the beltpack. A cable from the sound engineer is then placed in the beltpack, the musician can adjust the volume level himself via the beltpack.
Tip 3: Open or closed
If you opt for large headphones – also called over-ear or on-ear – you can choose from several variants. The first is the so-called circumaural headphones. These are headphones that completely close off your ears because the shells are over your entire ear. Another variant is the supra-aural headphones. These are not shells that sit around your ear, but pads that press against your ears. This type is slightly lighter than the over-ears and often fits a little better, but more outside noise ends up in your ear.
In addition, large headphones can be open, closed or semi-open. With closed headphones, the backs of the shells are closed, so much less outside noise leaks into your ear. The advantage of closed headphones is that you have the feeling that the sound is coming from your head. With open headphones, the backs of the shells are open, giving the listener more the feeling of listening to real speakers. Semi-open headphones also exist, but their precise definition is a bit vague. Usually manufacturers call headphones half-open if the model falls somewhere between an open and closed variant.
Tip 4: Insulation
Sound insulation is an important theme for musicians and DJs. The sound can be very loud on stage and if you use in-ear or on-ear headphones, you want to muffle as much outside noise as possible. The amount of sound that is muffled is indicated by decibels (dB). Normally, in-ear headphones can reduce noise by about 15 to 25 decibels, but some manufacturers go beyond this. If you use headphones with a lot of noise isolation, it is not recommended to use them in traffic. A high volume in combination with great sound insulation can ensure that you no longer hear the honking of cars.
Another feature is noise reduction (also known as noise cancellation). This is different from noise isolation and is usually found in the more expensive headphones. Noise reduction was originally conceived to ensure better communication between pilots and air traffic control. A microphone in the headphones picks up the background noise in the shell, then mirrors this recording and adds this mirrored recording back to the original signal. This makes communication easier to understand. However, this is an active intervention in the audio signal and causes the audio to be distorted. Not bad for communication purposes, less suitable for music.
Tip 5: Connection
The vast majority of headphones have an analog audio connection usually referred to as a jack or jack plug. There are several sizes of jack cables, but in almost all cases a 3.5mm version is used. Audio equipment for your living room almost always has a 6.3mm connection, while portable equipment such as smartphones has a 3.5mm version. Earbuds always have a 3.5mm plug, large headphones can have both a 3.5mm and a 6.3mm plug. In the first case, you need to connect an adapter to the headphones. Remember to purchase a stereo adapter. You can recognize this adapter by the two black stripes on the plug. If an adapter has only one black stripe, in most cases it is a mono plug. This then results in mono sound on your headphones. People who are deaf in one ear can have the sound played in mono on their smartphone or tablet. The left and right sides are merged and so you hear everything on one good ear. On an iOS device, find this at Settings / General / Accessibility / Hearing / Monaural Sound.
On most Android devices you will find this at Settings / Accessibility / Monaural Sound. If you have headphones with only a 6.3 mm plug and you want to use them with a smartphone, you have to buy an adapter. These adapters are much rarer and you have to go to the electronics store or web store for this. If you want to buy an extension cable for your headphones, you must also have a stereo cable.
Many new smartphones (mainly in the more expensive segment) have dropped such an audio port. On these smartphones you can only work with wireless headphones.
Gold
Gold conducts perfectly, so if you need to buy an adapter plug for your headphones, a gold plug is not a bad idea. It also prevents corrosion in the connection of your audio device. Some plugs also have a threaded attachment point. Here you can more easily connect the 3.5mm plug of your headphones. The option to screw your headphones onto an adapter plug is often found with professional headphones.
Aeroplane
Anyone who has ever taken a long-haul flight will have noticed that most in-flight entertainment systems have two connectors for headphones. The airline’s supplied headphones are often pretty worthless, but if you plug your own headphones into one of the jacks, you’ll only hear sound on one side. The solution is to buy a special aircraft adapter. These only cost a few euros.
Tip 6: Wireless
You can of course also opt for a wireless solution. In general, these are a bit more expensive than headphones with a cable. Wireless headphones usually work via bluetooth. Most new models connect directly to your smartphone, tablet or hi-fi amplifier, with some older models a bluetooth transmitter is included that you can attach to your audio equipment. Bluetooth headphones do need to be charged every now and then, the manufacturer often supplies an adapter or a USB cable. It is important to know how long the battery of wireless headphones lasts, if this is only a few hours, it is not of much use in mobile use. In many cases, you can also use wireless headphones as wired headphones, should the battery run out.
Tip 7: Specifications
When choosing headphones, you should of course be guided by the sound of the headphones. And before purchasing, you have to test a few models in the store, because you can often not deduce from the specifications which headphones sound good and which do not. There are some leads, so you can see which frequency range is covered by the headphones. Professional headphones reproduce sound between 10 to 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz (kHz). Frequencies outside this range are of no use anyway, since people cannot hear frequencies above 20 kHz anyway. In comparison, cats hear frequencies as high as 80 kHz and some bats can hear frequencies as high as 200 kHz.
The design of the loudspeaker in the headphones is also important: we are talking about the driver here, compare this with a normal loudspeaker. If your headphones have two drivers, it means that the different drivers each have their own function: one for low frequencies and one for high frequencies. This potentially generates a better sound, but this is not a guarantee. Of course it depends a lot more on the quality of the drivers.
Tip 8: Volume limit
Of course it is important that you do not listen to music at high volume for too long. Your smartphone or tablet tries to help you with this, for example by indicating with color codes whether the volume level is too high. As soon as you connect headphones to, for example, an iPhone and you press the volume buttons on the side, the volume level appears on the screen.
The blocks below indicate whether you are not damaging your ears. Almost all modern smartphones also have a setting that allows you to adjust the maximum volume level. On your iPhone you will find this under Settings / Music / Volume Limit. If you slide the back Max. Adjust volume, your iPhone will never rise above this volume level. You can also choose EU volume limitation turn on, this is a recommended level of the European Union. In Android you will find this option in the settings menu at Settings / Sound / Volumes.
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