Fixing Headphones

A look at how unnatural headphones are and what is being done to fix them.

- Kenny Yeo

THE PROBLEM WITH HEADPHONES

For most people, headphones are the second thing we reach for the most after our phones. We listen to headphones every day but most of us are completely oblivious to the fact that they are a deeply flawed way to listen to music or anything for that matter.

In the real world, sound travels to our ears usually from a distance. In doing so, it interacts with the environment. It might gain or lose energy, it might get absorbed by its surroundings, or it might be reflected. It takes on the character of the room as it reaches our ears, which is why you sound echoey when you speak in a small room and any venue where sound is important, i.e., the cinema or concert hall, requires a certain extent of acoustical treatment. Then there’s also the matter of cross-feed, which is sound from the right speaker entering our left ears and sound from the left speaker entering our right. This enables us to localize sound.

Headphones, by virtue of being so close to our ears, don’t get affected in the same way. Though they are still affected by other factors, such as the headphone’s ear tips or pads and the shape of our ears, these are overruled by their proximity to our eardrums. Headphones are literally pumping sounds directly into our ears and into our heads. This means there’s no interaction with a room and no cross-feed, and ultimately results in a lack of soundstage - audiophile speak for the acoustic image presented to the listener. This also explains why some dyed-in-the wool audiophiles insist on listening only to loudspeakers.