
It's time to level up headphone tech - chrmaury
http://chrismaury.com/post/20294864914/its-time-to-level-up-headphone-tech
======
djloche
While I agree with the general sentiment expressed (people buy poor quality
headphones that leak music and proceed to seemingly obliviously blast their
music for all to hear), please consider investigating higher quality
headphones & their tech.

From a well known audiophile guide to headphones:

"In general it's best to avoid products made by Skullcandy, Bose, Beats, or
Monster unless otherwise specified...These companies spend a lot of money on
advertising and looks rather than quality. That isn't to say these companies
haven't put out headphones worth buying, the Monster Turbine Coppers are
actually fantastic IEMs, it's just that a lot of the time you're paying a
premium for the name."

The same guide recommends the following in the $300-500 budget range: IEMs:
Westone UM3X, Sennheiser IE8, Shure SE535, Audio Technica CK100

Open: Sennheiser HD600, Sony MDR-SA5000, AKG K601, Sennheiser HD650

Closed: Audio Technica ATH-ES10, Denon D5000, Ultrasone Pro 900

Box stores like Best Buy are consumer goods stores. If you want to buy a mid
or high end DSLR, you won't find it inside a Best Buy location. If you want to
buy mid or high end headphones, you won't find them inside a Best Buy
location. If you want to buy a mid to high end computer monitor, you won't
find it inside a Best Buy location. I suspect this is true for many, many
niches.

~~~
oblique63
I also recommend checking out the [semi-open] Beyerdynamic DT 880 pros
(~$300). They're really crisp, with great clear bass reproduction, and have an
amazingly 'analytical' sound with their wide soundstage.

Absolutely one of the best pair of headphones you could get if you do any sort
of audio mixing work, but they're really nice for casual listening as well.

~~~
gouranga
> amazingly 'analytical' sound with their wide soundstage.

You sound like a HiFi journo.

Techie here:

Sennheiser HD-25 II's here. Paid 35GBP new (on offer one fine day). I can run
the cable over with my desk chair 100 times a day for 8 years and they still
work like the day they were bought...

~~~
oblique63
I guess that's because I'm also a musician and do a lot of audio mixing work.
I figured since we were on the subject of 'quality' that would imply having
good sound, which for me means a pair of headphones that lets me clearly
analyze what's going on in a busy mix.

but hey, for basic every-day usage, I like my $15 JVC Marshmallows just fine.
I havent tried your HD-25s, but Sennheiser does make some good 'bang-for-your-
buck' products, and I especially like their PX 200s (except for that silly
volume control they have).

------
jcampbell1
The "beats phenomenon" is a fashion thing, not an audio tech thing. People pay
$400 for beats because it makes them look cool and shows they are not poor.
Much like a Rolex is not about telling time.

I think there is a market for headphone tech, but I would look to the market
for Bose noise-canceling headphones as a proxy, not beats.

~~~
dfc
There are some seriously large markets for headphone tech and they have
nothing to do with being able to drown out the noise of a 747 engine or the
background noise at a starbucks.

Take a look at the C4OPS headset system by Silynx[1]. The C4OPS and others
like it are headset systems for combat communications. There are a lot of
sounds in combat; some of the loud ones (gunshots/explosions) you would like
to hear at a lower volume / with less fidelity and some quiet noises (teammate
whisper/footsteps behind you) you would like to be more aware of.

[1] <http://sofrep.com/4246/act-of-valor-radio-comms-2/>

------
Anechoic
_Existing hearing aids have directional microphones, can distinguish between
talking and background noise_

Not very well - they can perform well enough to make speech intelligible (and
it doesn't take much, human hearing is geared toward recognizing patterns) but
the quality is fairly low. That's fine for hearing aids, because low-quality
intelligibility is better than no intelligibility, but the technology is
nowhere near ready for the quality that consumers with normal hearing would
expect.

This might make a decent research project for the MIT Media Lab or Fraunhofer
Institute, but it's an idea that's a long way from being ready for primetime.

------
skybrian
I got a fairly advanced hearing aid recently and originally thought they might
be useful for listening to music too, like a good pair of headphones. This
turns out not to be the case. Hearing aids don't have any bass. When listening
to music, the best thing I've found is to use a regular speaker system along
with hearing aids that allow some sound to go through them (the earpiece
should have a reasonably large vent hole, rather than acting more like an
earplug). Also, the DSP algorithms are tuned for speech so I got mine
programmed with a "music mode", which turns most of that off for listening to
music.

There are other limitations - the hearing aids don't support bluetooth
directly (the antennas are too weak). Instead you have to use a streamer where
the antenna is built into the lanyard that goes around your neck, and the
quality is suitable for voice only. Since I don't make phone calls much,
bluetooth support turned out not to be worth the trouble.

Don't get me wrong - the tech is pretty interesting, and I'd love to be able
to program the DSP. But you need to know about the limitations when
extrapolating.

------
JonnieCache
Sound leakage is an inevitable consequence of good sound quality. Put simply,
those excess soundwaves ultimately have to go somewhere, and it's a choice
between jettisoning them into the environment and annoying people, trying to
absorb them in the body of the headphone and losing quality, or trying to
produce less of them in the first place, also losing quality.

Very cheap headphones leak sound because they are very cheap and their
designers and users don't care either way. Expensive, $500+ headphones leak
sound because they are meant to be used in a music production context as a
substitute for a $1000+ set of speakers, where one doesn't care about leakage.

If you are walking around campus, sitting on a train or generally doing
anything except sitting in a chair with your eyes closed then it is pointless
buying a very very expensive set of headphones because your physical movement
and the input from your other senses will influence your perception of the
music to an extent greater than the noise floor of the less expensive
headphones you could've bought.

To be honest, headphones schmedphones. High quality monitor speakers are more
exciting. There's a limit to what you can achieve with those tiny drivers. Far
better to covet things such as this:

<http://www.genelec.com/products/main-monitors/1036a/>

Flat response from 19-22000hz at 136db. Oh dear.

If £20,000 is a bit much for you, consider something like this:

[http://www.adam-audio.com/en/pro-
audio/products/a8x/descript...](http://www.adam-audio.com/en/pro-
audio/products/a8x/description)

~~~
ebiester
Both (mostly) true and missing the point.

The point of the article was to say that with the current capabilities of
smartphones, and televisions, etc, if we could wire it all up to a piece of
equipment similar to a hearing aid, it would improve our lives. Sound quality
really is a secondary characteristic to this for the purpose of the article.

~~~
JonnieCache
Fair point. I was just trying to address some mentions of sound leakage here
and in the article, and to point out that with audio a lot of the time we are
up against physical limits.

------
shabble
This is something I've put a lot of thought into over the last couple of
years, but I've never gotten around to figuring out an actual model or design.

My basic premises are:

* hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have exceptionally good noise rejection.

* They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.

* The ability to selectively attenuate/amplify certain signals would be very useful.

* Being able to pre-process incoming audio would be extremely useful for suppressing transients (say, gunfire, nearby aircraft, roadworks) to protect the user.

* A phased microphone array could be used to provide directional selectivity, and to determine and recreate the position of the original source.

* You can transparently mix other signals into your normal hearing, such as music, phone calls, games, etc.

In terms of tech, there's really 3 things to figure out:

1\. Can you achieve good isolation (external noise attenuation) whilst
providing high quality audio playback? Ideally the quality would be
indistinguishable from not wearing them, but physics might disagree.

2\. Can you build a relatively compact microphone array with positional
discrimination capabilities at or beyond the human ear?

3\. Can you build a DSP with the necessary discriminator/transient
suppression/mixing capabilities within a realistic power/space/heat budget?

4\. Can you build the whole thing into a per-ear unit or headphone unit, with
wireless links to some sort of controller, plus sources for input (e.g. a
phone or music player)

5\. Can you make money out of it? (Given how useful it could be to especially
police/military, I'm going to go with 'yes')

~~~
philwelch
> * hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have
> exceptionally good noise rejection.

> * They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.

There are already headphones you can get that are moulded to the individual
ear. Touring musicians use them on stage for monitors.

The problem with this is that extended hearing aid or in-ear headphone usage
is not really the best thing for your ears. Your ears are supposed to
ventilate. It's especially problematic if you have an ear infection.

------
zacharypinter
Yes! Thanks for the post.

I really enjoy scifi books that focus on how technology can integrate and
augment the human body. Though these books often talk of brain implants and
genetic modification, the path to that destination (if we do achieve it) will
almost certainly start with non-invasive versions.

I think that smartphones with ubiquitous internet and gps were the first big
step in this direction. Some of the next steps will be discrete/invisible
headphones that we can always be wearing, glasses/contact lenses with a
display, and (hopefully) some sort of easy input method that doesn't require
talking out loud or looking at a screen. Combine this with the ability to
record and search our entire lives (if we so choose) in addition to the
internet and we're 90% there with easily foreseeable technology.

~~~
chrmaury
Thank you! This is the point I was trying to make in the article. I don't
think I articulated it all that well. The technology exists, it's just branded
incorrectly.

I regret that I only have one upvote to give.

------
netik
Ultimate ears UE-7 IEMs, custom molded to the listener have excellent noise
rejection and eliminate the need for any sort of noise-cancelling
microphone/DSP hardware as they're molded to your ears and block out the
world.

If you want to do mastering with IEMs, the UE Reference monitors were
developed with Columbia studios and are extremely accurate.

Forgive the fact that UE was bought by Logitech, who manufactures less than
stellar user interface devices. Ultimate Ears are amazing.

I'm not even sure what the poster is looking for here. Simple physics get in
the way of most of the lower cost designs. You can't block out the world
without a proper fit (molds), you can't pack a ton of circuitry into the IEMs
without size being a factor, and it requires tuning and alignment to make
these devices accurate.

There's a reason why UE's are expensive - Someone has to hand build and align
them. It's worth it.

[http://blog.logitech.com/2009/06/11/behind-the-scenes-
ultima...](http://blog.logitech.com/2009/06/11/behind-the-scenes-ultimate-
ears-custom-in-ear-monitors-lab/)

------
morsch
I'm not sure headphone tech is in need of levelling up, or what the auther
thinks is: "Existing hearing aides have directional microphones, can
distinguish between talking and background noise, and connect pretty
seamlessly with other devices."

What good is a directional microphone and why (and lacking a microphone, how?)
would a headphone distinguish between voices and background noise? My
headphone already connects seamlessly using an ubiquitous connector. It's
wired, yes, but bluetooth options do exist and I'm quite happy not having
another battery to worry about.

As far as I know, there is already some crossover between in-ear headphone and
hearing aid technology. Excellent in-ear phones are available for less than
100 USD. Some people don't know of them, some people don't want to spend more
than 20 bucks, some people prefer over/on-the-ears.

~~~
dfc
_"What good is a directional microphone and why would a headphone distinguish
between voices and background noise?"_

Lacking any context there is no way to answer your question. Tools do not have
any intrinsic value, a tool's value is derived from its application to a
problem.

It seems as if you are approaching headsets purely as a means of music
reproduction. There are many applications of headsets where audio fidelity is
not the only/primary concern. The reference to augmented reality in the first
paragraph seems to imply that the author is concerned with more than just how
crisp Jerry's guitar sounds at the beginning of Fire on the Mountain. Don't
get me wrong I love crispy guitar solos but they are not the end all be all of
headsets.

For a really neat and demanding headset application take a look at the C4OPS
headset system by Silynx[1]. The C4OPS and others like it are headset systems
for combat communications. There are a lot of sounds in combat; some of the
loud ones (gunshots/explosions) you would like to hear at a lower volume /
with less fidelity and some quiet noises (teammate whisper/footsteps behind
you) you would like to be more aware of.

[1] <http://sofrep.com/4246/act-of-valor-radio-comms-2/>

~~~
morsch
The article (which I quoted and which serves as the context for my post)
refers the the state of _headphone_ tech, not headset tech. He only ever talks
about headphones, and the brief introductory reference to another blog entry
about AR seemed fairly beside the point and the theme isn't picked up again.

I guess he might have been talking about headsets, although once again I'm not
sure the tech is in need of an innovation boost from the hearing aide
industry, it seems to progress just fine, even outside the realm of speciality
gear for more efficiently killing people.

~~~
dfc
_"even outside the realm of speciality gear for more efficiently killing
people."_

FYI, this discussion is made possible because of DARPAnet and other innovation
boosts drawn from the realm of _"more efficently killing people"_. So
handwaving/ignoring tech.mil seems a little short sighted at the very least.
But let's return to:

 _"What good is a directional microphone and why (and lacking a microphone,
how?) would a headphone distinguish between voices and background noise?"_

How about headphones for factory workers? Construction workers? Soccer
moms/dads who want to listen to a book on tape while little johnny and 25
other 5 year olds clamber up and down and all over metal playground equipment?
Scientists on safari in africa or bird watching in the amazon? News camera man
operating in a nousy environment that needs to hear what the reporter is
saying while monitoring the police-band/other coverage/updates from main news
desk?

That's five examples that I can think of off the top of my head. But its not
clear what field you are restricting the discussion to. That is why I asked
what you meant by _"what good is"_? Without a problem/application it is
impossible to identify the value of a technology.

~~~
morsch
What would the directional microphone do in those circumstances?

~~~
dfc
When I came up with the list I was considering your initial question about a
directional microphone and _"why distinguish between voices and background
noise?"_ So some of my examples were not restricted to directional microphones
only. Given the new constraints:

 _Factory workers:_ Increase awareness about the sounds of the machinery the
worker is operating and ignore the sounds of nearby machines. In a more
hostile/mobile environment where the worker does not need to be so in tune
with their own machine the directional microphone could provide the same
benefit as it does with construction workers.

 _Construction workers:_ amplify noises from directions where the worker is
not looking and therefore increase awareness of threats from blind spots.

 _Bird watching in the amazon:_ Isolate/focus scientists hearing in the
direction of the bird that they are observing. Thereby reducing the
possibility that they attribute sounds/songs from other birds to the bird they
are observing.

 _News camera man:_ increase ability to hear sounds in front of camera man
and/or directions from reporter/crew members while reducing distraction of
environmental sounds.

Why are you moving the goal posts?

------
ChuckMcM
I have wondered about this as well. Certainly the combination of an in-ear
device and some external sensors would be killer at parties. Look at someone
and tap your ear, they get a ping that you'd like to chat with them and you
enable a conversation.

For the UX folks it would be interesting to design a chat UI where the inputs
might be things like head tilt, nods, shakes, taps, and voice.

The smarts don't have to be in the hearing aid either. My phone and my tablet
can be the 'processing' power with the WiFi/4G connection.

~~~
ktizo
I've been thinking about this very thing.

Accellerometers and gyros in the headphones linked up to Openal for a 3d
computer interface that doesn't require sight.

------
darkane
I recall President Laporte doing an interview at CES with a company producing
headphones that already perform this functionality, and then some. I can't
recall the name at the moment (CES was basically 85% headphones, too many to
recall), but I know the TWiT CES coverage is up on the YouTubes for anyone
less lazy than I.

~~~
dfc
_"President Laporte"_? Please tell me that is not the dude from screensavers.
Is this really something people say now?

~~~
darkane
It's a running joke, because he was voted President of the Internet in a
TechRepublic poll a few years ago.

------
soundlab
Phonak has done a good job of balancing hearing aid business with Assisted
Listening platforms, including an iCom system for TV.

[http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/accessories/commun...](http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/accessories/communication/icom/overview.html)

------
PagingCraig
Aren't there plenty of very good headphones out there already? Just look at an
Audiophile forum (and they won't be recommending Beats. That's just
marketing/hype/stupidity).

------
diego
I have a pair of Shure SE535 earphones and they are fantastic. Perhaps the
ergonomics could be improved, but I cannot imagine how the audio quality could
be better.

~~~
capnrefsmmat
I don't think the point is audio quality. Hearing aids do more than just have
good audio quality; they serve multiple purposes, like connecting to phones or
TVs. Presumably, one could build vastly better headphones by making them
easily connect to whatever device you want, wirelessly.

For example, many gyms have TVs playing, and have a small FM radio station so
you can tune into the audio with your MP3 player. Perhaps wireless headphones
could support this seamlessly. Or your headphones could pick up an audio track
played at a national park or tourist attraction, giving an audio tour.

We can do all these things currently, but they require hacks. Perhaps
headphones could support them natively instead.

~~~
Anechoic
_Perhaps headphones could support them natively instead._

You're basically talking about expanding the use of telecoil technology.

~~~
chrmaury
Or Apple's Airplay

------
bborud
not to mention that if I can get "hearing aids" made for music but still
looking like hearing aids I can look confused and yell "HUH!?" every time
someone I don't want to talk to says something to me.

