Gear Days - New Year Over Ear Invitational Part 1: Introduction

Before moving on with the year and new and exciting things, I wanted to do my big winter headphone review.  The contenders this time are all of the over ear headphones I own, currently 20 of them.  As usual, head over to the headphone spreadsheet for more complete breakdown.  As this is the "heavyweight" division, at least in terms of price, I'll be handling this particular post a bit differently than some of the previous ones.  First off, this will be just an introductory post going over the gear used to test and some other considerations.

During previous group headphones posts, I used my Focusrite 2i2 hooked up to a PreSonus HP4 so I could listen to multiple headphones at a time.  I will be doing so again for the majority of the testing.  Additionally, I'll be running a few headphones through an Aune T1 MK2 tube DAC/amp with its stock tube.  The reasoning behind this is that I've found that this particular group of headphones has a handful of individuals that sound markedly different when amped differently and in most cases better.

Another thing to note will be the inclusion of 1/10 ratings which I have shied away from in the past.  However, I want to have as much available range to work with in the ratings scheme.  A 1/10 rating in this sense only means that that pair of headphones ranked the worst out of the ones tested.  During the spring full listen, the 1/10 ratings will likely not be so far down.  The last bit of interesting information is why some headphones might rank higher during one listen versus another.  In going through the beginning of this listen through I found the California Headphones Co's Silverado headphones to have significantly worse bass than during the under $50 listen and so it loses out to the Incipio f38 which it beat prior.  Part of this has to do with my ears listening to different things on one group compared to another.  Our hearing adjusts somewhat to any sounds we hear which makes objective listening quite difficult.  Also, sometimes I change my mind.

Upcoming in this series of posts will be, the overall rankings followed by a post on the 'losers' with the last post of four being a post on the 'winners'.  I hope you enjoy, the next post should be up Friday.  Until next time.

--CsMiREK