Basic question I know
I am looking at headphones and intend to trial some but am confused by the types
I have some WH1000XM3 which I use mainly wired currently but would like to demo some with better sound quality if possible spending upto about £500
I listen to a huge range of music - Classical, EDM and Rock for example
My confusion stems from the headphones being described as Monitor/Reference/High End etc and for 'critical listening'
I started looking at some of the BeyerAudio versions but it left me feeling they may be designed for mixing / production as opposed to what I am after which is listening for pleasure with good range and quality?
Similarly when I looked at Shure's website
What can I expect from the different types of headphones - so I can get a list together to go demo? Also - open backs - do they leak a lot of sound?
Thinking about using them in same room as someone watching TV. My Sonys are closed backs and effectively shield incoming and outgoing noise but I read the open backs will give more 'space'.
Thanks
I have a YouTube video describing different types of headphones (
@Al ears Not sure if I’m allowed to share… it’s a common question, and I made a video so I could paste it in with pictures and drawings to explain better, and I made it independently from any of my previous consulting clients), but essentially there are open back and closed back (sealed) headphones, and they can come in the different form factors of over ear (full-sized headphones), on-ear (they rest on your ear and pin them back a bit), earbud (like AirPods, these rest outside your ear canal), and in-ear (canalphones, these have a tip inserted into your ear canal, like ear plugs). Very technically, there are also ear-speakers, but those are real rare 😂
Before I answer your questions about tuning, I just want to say that open backed headphones do leak a little sound, but the irritation and distraction they would cause someone else listening to TV is largely down to how loud you listen, how much noise the other person can tolerate, and how loud your TV is (the TV may mask the sound of your open headphones to the other person completely, but you will also hear the TV at the same time as your headphones, which may be an issue).
Now, tuning…
Here’s an advanced concept that actually explains a lot for newcomers: we all hear differently. Not only do we have our own preferences for the balance of bass, mids, and treble, but the sound we hear is physically influenced by the width of our head, amount of soft tissue, shape of our outer and inner ears, as well as the diameter of our ear canals. For example, MY ear canals are narrower than average (I like small ear tips), and this causes a resonance and boosted intensity with a certain range of lower treble frequencies, so while a Beyerdynamic DT880 is painfully piercing for me, with treble so strong that it masks other frequencies and has a hollow, metallic sounding midrange to me, others could take a turn with the exact same headphone and perceive something that feels only a little “bright” in treble presence or even just natural to them. Our ears are much more unique than a fingerprint, so what sounds neutral to you will sound different than neutral to someone else. Understanding this will help you know why people’s impressions of “too much” or less often “too little” don’t always match up.
With that said, we generally fall into a certain range on average, so you can get a general idea of what to expect.
A “reference” or linear tuned headphone is designed to have a relative balance of frequencies in equal measure, similar to how a music mixing engineer’s studio monitor speaker will sound just before reaching your outer ear. This will add the least “color” to what the recording engineer put into the recording. In general, however, a studio monitor is not how we are accustomed to listening to sound on HiFi setups at home… a typical home setup has a bit more bass excitement, and often more reverb (echo) and resonance (the walls themselves vibrating and adding volume) than a studio setting. Recording engineers know this too… they will also often listen in a car or with a typical headphone to make sure the average listener wouldn’t hear something strange. So, we typically expect a “warmer” sound like our home HiFi systems than the more plain sound of a studio.
Now that you hopefully understand why there is a difference between “reference” and “warm” tunings, let’s skip ahead and describe a few more tunings. Warm/cold typically refer to having more/less bass. Bright/dark refers to the amount of treble emphasis. People will also often use shouty/recessed to refer to emphasis in the midrange, but that’s a bit of a misnomer because typically we base our volume settings on making shouting voices sound as loud (or almost as loud) as someone shouting a few feet away, and more calmly sung vocals just slightly louder than conversational volume. Our brains are hardwired to be most sensitive to frequencies corresponding to vocals (so, that’s the mids), and the extremes of pitch (bass and treble) are like special effects that add excitement and something we don’t hear in everyday ambient life. Of course, there are more aspects to sound that cause it to sound more crisp and make it easier to separate instruments from the overall mass, also the illusion that sounds are coming from in front of you (“imaging”) or at different layers of distance from you (“soundstage”), but we are most sensitive to these different emphases in mids, bass, and treble, and often they are the only descriptions given in reviews and impressions.
Ask yourself: do you want soothing, refined sound that you can listen to for hours and hours? You probably want something mildly warm and dark. Do you want to be transported to the studio, and feel like you’re standing in front of a live and unplugged performance? You probably want something linear and reference, though it may seem more like “music” with a modest increase of warmth and brightness (a gentle “u” shape on graphs). Do you want something exciting, that will make you sit up at the edge of your seat and grip you emotionally? Then “make it smile” with a more pronounced emphasis on warmth and brightness and more recessed mids.
I would say the Sony WH1000XM3 is quite warm and only a little dark, very much like what is expected from a home HiFi speaker system… but it isn’t the most accomplished headphone at separation, imaging, and soundstage. If you enjoy the tuning, you might ask for a warm headphone with stronger performance in those latter three characteristics. Going straight to a “reference” headphone may sound sterile and “clinical” compared to what you are used to… but then again, maybe not, I personally started my HiFi journey with headphones others would describe as cold and yet I still found myself able to enjoy many flavors of headphones!
Good luck, have fun!