It's time to level up headphone tech(chrismaury.com) |
It's time to level up headphone tech(chrismaury.com) |
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.
I tend to run IEMs myself, my target being good fit, good sound, and blocking background noise.
I started with Shure E2Cs and moved on to Westones. With IEMs, it really comes down to preference of fit and sound signature. Westones are my preferred between the two, though going for the higher end, while sounding great, I can't quite justify...
I have signed up for this KickStarter project though: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendary/earbuds-time-t...
NB: I'm not an audiophile - most of my listening is podcasts.
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.
I got them because they were closed, and I expected to be able to use them in public without outside sound leaking in. In practice, they let in about as much sound as the open Grado HP-1s that I used to have.
The HP-1s are much more analytical and accurate for mixing work. (yes, I know that they now cost a lot more than $300, but they didn't cost that much more when I first bought them back in 2003).
For public listening, nothing beats Etymotic ER-4P IEM with foam tips. They block out -40dB of sound with no noise canceling technology, so there is no distortion. I don't know of any other IEMs that block out that much noise (there may be other ones today, but back when I bought them they blocked out the most noise).
As far as best sound, I think the AKG K-1000s were the best sound (and a bargain at their original MSRP), but the requirement to use full-size speaker amps to drive them was tedious.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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')
> * 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.
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.
I regret that I only have one upvote to give.
The only thing that crops to mind other than nerve stimulation would be mounting a driver on your eardrum. Think of how a piezoelectric transducer works, and replace the discs with your eardrum.
I just ordered Sony Ericsson WM600 bluetooth receiver (35 EUR with shipping) for my miniature Klipsch X10 in-ear headphones (they are amazing, btw). Will make an ideal discrete set, I think.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Accellerometers and gyros in the headphones linked up to Openal for a 3d computer interface that doesn't require sight.
http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/accessories/commun...
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.
You're basically talking about expanding the use of telecoil technology.
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).
Both the sennheisers and the DT880 benefit from an amplifier. A decent small desktop amplifier can be had for $150-200. Go ahead and buy the amp used on head-fi. They don't really depreciate in value with use like headphones and can be sold later for the same price.
An awesome headphone rig with used components can be had for about $500 total ($300 on the headphones and $200 on the amp). Beyond that point it really is subject to diminishing returns and gets highly subjective and bikesheddy. This is coming from someone that sold his Grados and AKG for more than $3000 for both. As I said, I now just have IEMs, but when I buy another headphone again, my plan is to get the HD-650s used from a first owner or if I'm feeling particularly giddy and very flush with cash maybe the HD-800 used from a first owner that can be had for a $1000 if you keep your eyes peeled for them. Either way, I intend it to be my last headphone purchase, because it's easy to get caught up in the equipment and forget about the music.
Also, I wouldn't mix with any closed headphones, metal or otherwise, except maybe those two top of line sony models that are both discontinued. I never mixed myself, but everyone I know who did stuck with open headphones in a quiet room or studio monitors for serious audio work.
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.
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?