
Headphone Specs Explained (2017) - Tomte
https://www.themasterswitch.com/headphone-specs-explained
======
unlinked_dll
Something alluded to but not said explicitly is that specs don’t tell you if
an audio product is “good.” Very few people can look at a spec sheet for any
product and tell you if it’s “good” or “better” than something else. You need
to listen to it.

Impedance/sensitivity just tell you how well it will play with your system.
Stuff like “high impedance == more clarity” is snake oil.

I say this as a former pro audio specialist who has read and possibly written
a bit of snake oil in their time.

Headphone specs are not straight up horseshit like the rest of their product
page, but they are next to useless. Take your daily driver and a reference
track you know and listen to the cans before you buy them.

~~~
nradov
Unless you do a blind listening test, most consumers will fool themselves into
believing that the more expensive or attractive looking headphones sound
"better".

~~~
Waterluvian
Company idea (or maybe Consumer Reports is good enough):

Don't hire experts to review products. Do a double blind study with like 100
participants. I pay you $5 to access this years study of 80 different
popular/common headphones. But of course do this for all kinds of products
that need this kind of review.

I would happily pay for a sample of how the population feels about products
and how they on average rank them.

Let me x/y plot things like rating vs. Price/warranty/whatever

Don't ruin your pages with advertising.

Be annoyingly clear and repetitive that you only make money from the fee and
everything else is done in a way that reduces bias wherever possible.

And don't screw up the UX (looking at you, graphics cards and CPU sites stuck
in 2003)

~~~
unlinked_dll
There are market research firms that do things like this, and their studies
cost at least 100 times more than that. It's actually pretty lucrative to keep
up to date on details like that if you consult for investment bankers on a
particular product category/market segment but that can be difficult to break
into.

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sanjiwatsuki
This article is really inaccurate. The impedance isn't a good signal for how
much power needs to be pumped into the headphone. The impedance also doesn't
act as a good signal for what devices could generate enough volume. It also
isn't a good signal for being able to "more accurately and vividly reproduce
sound." Almost everything in this section isn't accurate.

Lower impedance headphones are "harder" to drive at the same voltage because
they require more current. Often, amplifiers will have lower maximum outputs
when driving into a lower impedance.

The sensitivity section isn't too bad but a lot of this article is pure snake
oil and bad science. A lot of the amplifier talk in this article also doesn't
hold up to scrutiny.

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analog31
>>> Impedance is electrical resistance – essentially, how well something
resists an electrical current that passes through it. It’s a “measure of the
opposition that a circuit presents to a current when a voltage is applied.”
(Thanks, Wikipedia). Even if that makes no sense, headphone impedance is still
very easy to interpret. It’s measured in ohms (Ω) and what it tells you is how
much power your headphones will need to get to a reasonable listening volume.

For someone who understands what voltage, current, impedance, and power are,
this paragraph is going to look like someone either doesn't understand the
subject matter at all, or that something has been lost in an attempt to
simplify it for laypeople.

~~~
colonwqbang
I agree. But how would you have phrased it?

~~~
zhsvszkvx
The ratio of voltage and current in the complex plane.

Drop the “harder” and “easier” analogies with Ohmic resistors. They’re
confusing, with impedance you’ve gone up a level and the analogy breaks down.
Even “matching” Z is kinda meaningless if you don’t express it as a complex
quantity: what you’re trying to match is not |Z| but Z* (otherwise it is
possible to match |Z| And deliver no power! In practice matching |Z| is good
enough)

What if you don’t know about phasors and Fourier transforms?

Doesn’t matter, don’t look down on people to over simplify. Use the magnitude
and angle formulation of complex numbers and build on that with pretty
pictures.

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falcolas
In addition to understanding impedance and sensitivity, doing actual tests of
the headphones to see how they match up with your hearing and tastes is
important (and getting harder to do with high end headphones). I personally
use the following:

[https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php](https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php)

~~~
fsh
The audio characteristics of headphones can also be objectively measured using
test gear. rtings.com has a very nice database with comprehensive measurements
for a large number of headphones.

~~~
Youden
I found rtings' database was good for regular consumer stuff like gaming
headsets and noise cancelling stuff for planes but it was quite limited when
it comes to "audiophile" brands.

This website had much better coverage of those brands: [https://reference-
audio-analyzer.pro/en/catalog-reports.php?...](https://reference-audio-
analyzer.pro/en/catalog-reports.php?sp_1=1&tp=1)

The UI is a bit of a mess though, you need to select a "User" or "Pro" report
on the device's page (which otherwise doesn't tell you anytihng). Here are
some example reports:

User: [https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/user-
report.php?id=7...](https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/user-
report.php?id=789&page=hp-meze-99-classic)

Pro: [https://reference-audio-
analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/meze-99-cl...](https://reference-audio-
analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/meze-99-classic.php)

I honestly have no clue what I'm looking at here though.

While I'm at it, the AudioScienceReview forums
([http://audiosciencereview.com/](http://audiosciencereview.com/)) have nice
comprehensive measurements of the other things you might find in an audio
setup (e.g. amps, players, DACs etc., even USB-C dongles).

------
upofadown
>Why is this important? Because the higher the number in front of the Ω
symbol, the more power-hungry the headphones will be.

The opposite really. The higher the impedance the less power they will consume
for a particular input voltage.

~~~
Tomte
What is meant is this: if your headphones have high impedance, you need more
input voltage to drive them to a given power level.

That's why lower-impedance headphones are used for mobile phones, and only
"real" audio gear is used with higher impedance.

For example, the Beyerdynamic DT-880 is sold in three versions: 32 Ohm, 250
Ohm and 600 Ohm. The 600 Ohm on an iPhone won't make you happy.

~~~
abhishekjha
>For example, the Beyerdynamic DT-880 is sold in three versions: 32 Ohm, 250
Ohm and 600 Ohm.

But which one is better? Should I go for a lower impedance or higher
impedance?

~~~
icegreentea2
The first thing you need to do is get one that matches your audio output.

In "theory", you get higher impedance as a result of thinner/lighter wires in
your voice coil, which "could" result in better sound reproduction.

In practice, I don't think that's really relevant for most usecases (in any
case, you would have to measure the performance of the specific hardware
anyways). So the most important thing is just get something that your output
driver can handle.

------
joveian
Inner Fidelity has some useful data for various (mostly expensive but not all)
headphones. The frequency response graph is particularly helpful.

[https://www.innerfidelity.com/headphone-
measurements](https://www.innerfidelity.com/headphone-measurements)

I like my NAD VISO HP50.

~~~
nucleardog
You can find a lot of similar data across a pretty wide array of headphones on
the market on rtings.com as well. For instance, here's your HP50 headphones:
[https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/nad/viso-
hp50](https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/nad/viso-hp50)

I really like some of the non-sound related measurements they perform -- the
clamping force and breathability are pretty important for comfort. For
instance, as someone with glasses there's a good chance those HP50s would not
be remotely comfortable as the high clamping force on the glasses arms tends
to get pretty irritating after a while.

Their more thorough sound tests are really invaluable as well -- for instance,
apparently the bass response goes down considerably with the HP50s when the
cups can't form a good seal (e.g., if you're wearing glasses).

------
jancsika
Don't forget the more fundamental questions like "are they purple," or, "holy
shit are those woodgrain?"

------
abhishekjha
Is there something equivalent for computer parts as in "computer parts specs
explained"? Like it should explain how to choose a processor/RAM/(I/O)/battery
and other components which make up a computer.

~~~
leetcrew
I mean, basically just read reviews and look at benchmarks on sites like
anandtech. there's not a lot of mystery in computer hardware specs. find a
benchmark that approximates your workload and buy the top scoring part that
you can afford. in theory, you could delve into the architectural details of
different CPUs but it will take a lot of knowledge for this to be a better use
of your time than just looking at benchmarks.

