If anything here is confusing, inspiring or absolutely incorrect your comments would be much appreciated.  This is a work in progress and your help improving the information is requested.  Thanks!

< Listening on Speakers

Having thought about how we listen on speakers, lets consider how we listen on headphones.  This time, the left channel goes to the left ear, the right channel goes to the right ear, and we skip all of the Crosstalk and room acoustics.  Neat huh?

The problem is, if we mixed on speakers, our audio will sound different on headphones.  The lack of Crosstalk means less of the same thing in both ears, so Localization and Spaciousness seem wider.

Another problem is that stereo can sound like it is inside your head instead of out in front of you.  Speakers always seem to be in front of you, but headphones kind of localize inside you.  That might be really cool for a Fantasy presentation, but it doesn’t work so well for Realistic stereo.

There are three basic styles of headphones [pictures?]:

(1)  In-ear “buds” that sit inside the opening of the ear canal

(2)  Supra-aural “pads” that rest on the outer ear

(3)  Full sized Circum-aural “cans” that rest on the head and completely cover ears

Because they touch you, extended time wearing any kind of headphones can get uncomfortable.  “Cans” and to some degree “pads” trap heat too.  This can add to the discomfort.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, when you have drivers close to your ears they seem to cause listening fatigue more quickly than speakers.

If you wear “Cans” that are closed (acoustically sealed against your head), they can do a good job of blocking other sounds around you, so you can hear the audio better in a noisy environment.  But closed headphones also trap some sound inside, so you can get a kind of acoustical reflection, like a live room, but much smaller and much closer to your ears.  This can really color the sound.  You can also get custom fitted "buds", commonly called In-Ear Monitors, that block noise and make it easier to hear what's in the headphones. Some form fitting models exist that don't require the expense and time of having custom fitted ones made, but the generic ones do not perform as well at blocking unwanted sound.

Despite myths, small drivers can reproduce low frequencies.  But they have to work very hard relative to their size to do it.  So bass tends to steal significant power from the drivers and degrade the signal overall.

There are some specialized products made to help headphones more closely resemble speakers, by creating crosstalk artificially, even creating some room reflections.  But most of the listening public hasn’t adopted these products, and it is worth listening on consumer grade headphones to find out how different your stereo audio can sound for listeners who use ordinary ones.  Headphones also seem to reveal subtle details, especially high frequency clicks and pops, that sometimes are less noticeable on speakers.  Checking audio on headphones can be very helpful in that regard.

The savvy recording/mixing engineer accepts the differences between speakers and headphones, checks audio on both to find out what’s working and what isn’t, and makes adjustments to ensure nothing sounds incredibly wacky on one compared to the other.

Binaural Recording and Listening >

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Randy Coppinger - who I am and other stuff I'm doing.