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FEATURE
AUDIO AUDACITY
Tune your ears to a fine pair of cans to find a whole new meaning of "aural pleasure."
// WORDS BY TAYLOR BROWN
// PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY VALERIE SK
Boomin' beats! A pretty pair of phones may seem a bit extreme, but in actuality they can take your music listening to a whole other level of experience. When in the market for headphones, experts say to consider quality, comfort and function.
ristine frequencies aren't the only thing Reggie Smith gets when he wears his headphones. He gets
an experience.
"I don't have to worry about anything else when I am wearing them. I'm completely immersed in the music," says Smith, a Leawood sophomore and alocal DJ. He invested and bought his pair of Ultrasone DJ1 Pro full-sized headphones online for $235. They are binaural headphones, which means that they stimulate the pinnae, or outer ears, and create a realistic sense of the audio playback coming from any direction, not just left or right. The desired effect can place you in the room of the recording and me away with
The right pair of headphones will make you feel as if you are in the music, not just listening to it. Yet expensive professional DJ headphones aren't required for improving your listening experience. There are hundreds of 'phones out there that can provide a transient experience, but the trouble is knowing what to look for.
Considerthefollowinginformation for your audio adventure.
Untangle tech specs
Unfamiliar technical specifications can be the most daunting factor
when comparing headphones. When looking at specs, it's best to keep it simple. Focus on the frequency response range. The average frequency response range is 50 to 20,000 hertz says Scott Houston, product specialist for Sennheiser, an audio equipment manufacturer. Humans can typically only hear between 20 and 20,000 hertz." Headphones that go past that frequency range make the response smoother and more natural, like
human hearing is supposed to be," Houston says.
Deter hearing damage
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In-ear headphones sometimes get a bad rap for being in the ear canal, but hearing damage from headphone use is entirely up to the user, not the design. People adapt to the volume of music they are listening to very quickly, Houston says. Most people
wear in-ear headphones when they are in noisier environments such as subways or buses because of their portability. Because people adapt to what they are listening to, they constantly turn up the volume to compensate for their noisy environment. "If you are exposed to certain amplitude for even five minutes it can cause hearing damage," Houston says. "It's up to the user to prevent that."
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