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Choosing high-quality sound: which headphones do you need?

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Choosing high-quality sound: which headphones do you need?

Headphones high quality

Choosing high-quality sound: which headphones do you need?

Best Quality Headphones

Sound quality also depends on the source (player, smartphone, tablet) and the headphones. You cannot achieve a good result by focusing on one link in the chain and forgetting about another. The absence of external noise significantly improves perception, so choose headphones with the highest degree of passive noise isolation. The best option in this case are earplugs. Much also depends on the quality of the recordings. MP3 in this situation is not the best option. A truly natural sound is only possible with uncompressed (WAV) or lossless compressed (APE, FLAC) audio files. It is important that the device you choose supports these formats.

Which player do you prefer?

Typical models, the size of a cigarette lighter and generally costing little money, can provide very good sound, by music lover’s standards without audiophile requests, if you use high-quality headphones and encode music files in formats no loss like FLAC or APE. Of course, the player must be compatible with such recordings.

One step higher are pocket media players. Their sound path is usually of better quality. Firstly, by the use of a more powerful amplifier capable of offering a fairly dynamic sound with clearly articulated bass. True, the owner receives support for video files, a calendar, and a host of other, often useless, functions on upload.

The best sound is provided by a set of a portable “audiophile” player mounted on a discrete element base and headphones of a comparable class. In terms of sound quality and power, these instruments come close to stationary home equipment. Another thing is that the “pocket” of the tandem will be very conditional, and the price can become a serious obstacle.

Specialized audio player or smartphone?
Choosing high-quality sound: which headphones do you need? rice-2
It is impossible to answer this question unequivocally, as there are quite musically sensitive smartphones for sale, as well as very mediocre players. An average modern smartphone, it is comparable in sound quality and power output with a budget discreet player on average, in rare cases, with a middle-class multi-format player. Smartphones cannot compete with specialized audio players.

An additional advantage of a separate music device is its energy independence (the player can be downloaded, but will not go offline), and the disadvantage is the risk of missing an important call.

What headphones to choose?
The most convenient option to carry and transport are in-ear headphones called “earplugs.” They also have the highest efficiency and the best passive noise isolation. The price is also nice: for an acceptable sum, you can easily get high-quality sound. It makes sense to choose a different type of headphones only when plug-in headphones don’t suit you for some reason.

The optimal electrical impedance for portable headphones is in the range of 16 to 32 ohms and the sensitivity is 105 to 110 dB / mW. Both are listed on the back of the box or on the manufacturer’s website. The higher the resistance and / or lower the sensitivity, the higher the requirements for the signal source (player, smartphone). In this case, the power of a standard device may not be enough.

Headphones with an active noise cancellation system are significantly more expensive than conventional ones (and at the same price they sound worse than analog ones without electronic filling), but they are effective only when the noise is monotonous. Such models are more suitable for air travel.

Much depends on the device you are using and under what conditions you intend to listen to music. The best and most versatile solution is in-ear headphones with silicone seals. Due to their low impedance (usually up to 24 ohms) and high sensitivity (over 110 dB), they are a fairly light load for any device, allowing you to get the required sound pressure without distortion. In addition, it is these headphones that provide the most effective passive sound isolation and are pocket-friendly.

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How is sound quality measured?

How is sound quality measured?

Sound Quality

For more than two decades, there has been a debate about how to measure quality. There is a sea of opinions, but the one thing that everyone agrees on is that the value of the harmonic distortion of a signal means nothing.

sound quality

About “good” distortions. There is a stable and orthodox class of audiophiles who are fans of tube sound. When comparing the sound of amplifiers without negative feedback (NF), which reduce harmonic distortion, and amplifiers with NF, they give preference to amplifiers without NF. And this is logical, because the tube amplifier has a narrower frequency band due to the use of transformers. The predominance of lower order harmonics in your sound subjectively enhances the sound. Here’s an example: Famous tube guru A. Likhnitsky several years ago praised his amp proofreader for a turntable. In it, he introduced positive feedback, which increases non-linear distortion. The resulting overexposure of the sound seems correct to the author of the development, although, I must say, it is far from a universal solution. For many people whose hearing sensitivity to high frequencies increases, this device is simply unbearable to listen to.

In many books and articles it can be read that a person determines the location of a sound source due to the fact that he feels the phase difference in the signals received by his ears. In fact, nature does not know a parameter such as the phase of the signal; this is a mathematical abstraction that is convenient for calculations. Hearing, on the other hand, operates:

– Intensity, and recognizes signals in the range of no more than 40 dB during a short time interval. If a loud sound is followed by a sound with a level lower than the first by 40 dB, then it is not audible. The transition to other intensities requires more or less adaptation time.

– Frequency. The structure of the ear and the nervous system contains, on average, about 2000 frequency analyzers. There really is an extension. So don’t be offended if you don’t listen to what others are hearing, all statements are about your own heritage.

– Time. Hearing and the brain determine the difference in the arrival time of signals in different ears, not the phase. And time resolution is measured in microseconds!

The whole of this “hardware” is double and has memory. Localization is impossible if the difference in intensities and arrival times is simultaneously small.

Norbert Wiener said that the language of the brain is not mathematical. Modern equipment uses a mathematical apparatus to transform the temporal sequence of signals into the spectral domain, where mathematical processing is possible. The fundamental disadvantage of this technique is that it works in portions: a set of samples is memorized, a conversion is done “there”, it is processed, then a conversion “backwards” or a control action. And hearing works on a spectrum in real time. In addition, memory allows you to “scroll” what you heard multiple times for more detailed recognition of the sound image, be it a verbal message or spatial information. Thanks to these properties of hearing, “deep localization” is possible. Its essence is not at all that the hearing compares the spectra of the signal received and previously “recorded”, supposedly there is a memory of how the sound should be heard at different distances, but in the fact that it analyzes the time series and selects a substring in it that does not belong to the main signal, but to its reverb sound, and by the time difference determines the distance to the sound source. (Reverberation is the decay process of sound that accompanies its reflections, the most prominent example being the echo, as well as the rumbling of an empty room). That is why a person can determine the distance to a sound source that they have never heard. The “auditory brain” system has remarkable capabilities, it is a combined filter of colossal equivalent processing power, which allows it to “extract” the expected set of sounds from much higher noise levels.

The presence of a comb of 2000 separate frequency sensors in the hearing analyzer does not lead to coarseness of auditory sensations. Everyone can check it out. Take a high-quality speaker, connect an audio sine generator across the amplifier, and use the SPL meter (located at the listening position!) To eliminate the frequency response with a smooth frequency slip. You will be surprised how uneven this graph will be than the one obtained by the RTA method in one-third octave bands of pink noise. Then, with the chart in hand, listen to the speaker again.