Ever wonder why music sounds so much better on some earphones than others? Why does a movie theatre leave such an impact, while the speakers on your TV sound underwhelming? It’s not just the volume of sound that makes that difference. If you were to amplify the sound of your earphones, that wouldn’t result in good sound. There is a lot more to it. It should be obvious to us, we just don’t give a lot of attention to our earphones, as we do for so many other things. We were so bugged by it, we even wrote about a feature about it. Wouldn’t you agree?
Before we move onto the subject of what makes music sound so good, and why some earphones sound much better, we need to understand how sound works. It’s everywhere and most of it (noise) occurs because of things out of our control, while some of it comes out speakers. Earphones are tinier versions of loudspeakers, and they function in pretty much the same manner. They fit in your ears and play lower volumes of sound.
The idea behind any speaker, large or tiny is to create vibrations and move air. The fine movement transmitted through the air are captured by our ears and that’s what our brains perceive as sound. A good pair or earphones or headphones (or speakers) produce just the right amount of sound as intended by the artist.
We mentioned this earlier, there is more to sound than the volume. There are frequencies that make things sound a certain way. The rate of these vibrations is denoted by Hertz (Hz). This is the number of vibrations in a second. Most speakers or earphones can’t create all these frequencies at the right volumes, but some can get close. These make a good pair of earphones or headphones, or even speakers. A lot of audiophiles and music enthusiasts look for the most natural, and most accurate sounding earphones.
Every genre of music has a variety of instruments, which have evolved over the decades, as has recording hardware. Each of the musical instruments has a certain tone too, and good earphones can ensure these sounds are authentic.
The good earphones are designed and manufactured after a lot of research, endless testing and a lot of care. The emphasis is on precision and accuracy, rather than on loudness, styling and branding. Sometimes, it’s possible to achieve this, even if you aren’t the biggest, baddest brand in the market. It’s why most of the earphones market is still unorganized and a lot of gems can be found if you look for them.
Earphones priced quite low can sound great, some sound better than some others at some things. The flat, natural and balanced sound is what audiophiles look for. Some models come very close to this ideal sound, but most others will miss out on some aspect – either on detail, on bass, the mids or treble. These differences make every earphone different, no matter what the brand.
The drivers are at the heart of any earphone or headphone. They create the vibrations we’ve been talking about and so, they are most responsible for the quality. Other factors also creep in, such as the fabric and materials used in the construction of the shell that houses all these components. Some manufacturers use wood, some use plastic and metal. Each of them has some acoustic characteristic. They might sound a little empty or too harsh, more or lose detail. This choice of materials affects headphones than earphones, because of the amount of housing used and the space sound has to reverberate and move around in it.
Cables in comparison, rarely make any improvement but they do improve the life of any earphones. Any breakages or tears in the cable can causes disturbances in the sound, or as we often experience, having a badly worn out cable can result in earphones stop working. A more expensive pair of earphone tends to use better quality cables, so you can afford to dump them into a bag or pocket without worrying about breaking them.
The other bit of the formula to good audio is using a good source. This could be a laptop, a high-end audio receiver, a PC, even an old MP3 player or for all practical purposes, our smartphones. Most of us ignore it but the quality difference between smartphones can be quite drastic. Another factor that can affect the quality of earphones and headphones is the use of Bluetooth. Really low-priced Bluetooth hardware can compress audio, so a lot of people prefer cabled hardware to achieve good audio quality.
Buying a pair of earphones or headphones is fun. There is a lot of interesting research you can do, among which is knowing what test tracks to use while trying out earphones you might be interested in.
