More Gear Days, I'm thinking Octobers will be devoted to it, but we'll see. This post is about determining how good a piece of output gear (headphones/speakers) is. There are plenty of articles out there on this topic, but I'd like to put it in my words and at the same time give you some other viewpoints in the form of other articles.
The first thing you have to consider is why even buy different headphones or speakers? Sound is sound right and no matter how much you spend the sound quality won't be very different? Well in my opinion, everyone can tell the difference between cheap headphones and more expensive ones. In most circumstances and uses it might not be horribly important to you but I think that everyone who can hear can tell the differences between one pair of headphones or speakers and another.
So let's get to it. First off is the form of your output. Obviously things sound different on speakers than on headphones. Additionally, how those are built and their forms have an effect on the sound produced, see the previous post on different kinds of headphones. In this space, headphones are a bit more diverse, but there are distinct differences in speakers as well. For instance, a quad system or a 5.1 surround system has different spacial effect that a simple 2.0 system. By the way, 5.1 means 5 'tweeters' and a sub woofer, if you were curious or were not aware. They make for great home theater systems due to their ability to create sounds that can take up a space with really good positional sound, namely you can hear sounds coming from 5 directions. The spatial effect is sometimes called 'panning', more commonly so in 2 channel systems and is actually really important in determining sub par equipment from great equipment. Great equipment accurately represents space instead of shoving it all to the center or in strange places. It's also a good way to tell when equipment is going bad since the center of the sound might shift to the left or right which is likely a problem with your gear.
After you figure out what kind of form you want to use, and understand how that affects sound, is the noise profile. Oftentimes this is split into three categories, lows or bass, mids, and highs or treble. All three are important in determining whether something is just ok or truly great. As a simple description, bass is the range of frequencies that we normally perceive as bass. This includes things like bass drums, cellos, and all manner of low frequency electronic sounds as used in genres like dubstep. Treble or the highs are things that I personally don't always think about. Things in this range include the highest registers of the human voice, cymbals, and various other instruments that can reach into very high frequency ranges, violins and piccolos for instance. The most important generally to us is the mids though. The mids house most of the human vocal range along with most instruments in any orchestra or band. When the mids are weak or 'recessed' you get a very hollow sound to your music that tends to sound overly bassy. However, when they're raised too much you get a very frontal focus to most instruments that tends to be somewhat off putting and fatiguing to listen to. When the treble is really strong, it comes off as very harsh and drum hits almost sound painful to listen to. When bass is too strong we can hear rattling and ringing that doesn't actually exist. For other explanations see this. Also, the site there is a pretty good place to see what people think about various headphones. Scientifically, I put the lows at below 220 Hz, mids between 220 and 2000ish Hz, and highs as anything above that.
Next is what you want from your headphones or speakers. People are naturally biased towards headphones or speakers that are balanced or otherwise reproduce sound as faithfully as what we would hear from our own ears in nature. This means that the bass, mids, and highs are all relatively equal. Generally, we want clarity from our headphones or speakers. This means that cymbal crashes are crisp, voices are rough if they are meant to be rough and are silky when they are indeed silky. However, this also means different things to different people. Our ears are each individually tuned towards different frequencies, through both artificial and natural means. For instance, my ears are attuned very heavily towards the timbres involved in string music and I find myself listening very intently at those things when they exist in music on a purely subconscious level. While one person might find a pair of headphones or speakers very bassy, another might find them just right. When you figure out where your preferences are, you can better tailor future purchases or go outside of them for a different view on what music can sound like.
Lastly, and most importantly to most people is price. Obviously, audio equipment isn't cheap with expensive headphones costing into the thousands of dollars and speakers going even further than that. As a note, that second website should really redesign, it looks like it was made in the early to mid 90s. If money is of no concern, then go ahead and buy away until you find something you truly love. If you're like everyone else, you're gonna want to get something more down to earth. There are plenty of really great headphones in the $30-100 range as long as you spend a bit of effort. Here are a couple that I have my eyes on, whether I have them or not. For most people, the $30-100 range is affordable, but there are many who will no doubt have concerns on why they are spending money on subtle changes in sound. From personal experience, I can tell you that every single one of the headphones I have has a different sound and different character. Some headphones can be very unflattering to music, and sometimes that's exactly what you need as strange as it sounds. Anyways, the headphones I pointed out up there are ones that I think have great value for their price of which I've tried 2 and currently own one, I'll get to that in a bit. I hope this has been informational and I hope that you stick around for more.
--CsMiREK
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