So when you are looking around for a good pair of headphones, you usually look at the prices of the sets and read reviews right? It's really easy to think "well I will look for something with good reviews, then rank quality a bit based on the cost." The more expensive sets with good reviews must be better then the cheap ones right?

Some intrepid scientists decided to take a look into this, through measuring the frequency response of various headphones. The results of their work were recently published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in an article titled "No correlation between headphone frequency response and retail price."

From the title, you can already answer the question posed in this blogs title. However lets dive into the authors work and take a look at their findings. You know, for science :)

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We humans absolutely LOVE our headphones, it is reported that this market will involve over 25 billion in yearly sales by 2024 [2, that is absolutely massive. By comparison at the time of writing this the total market-cap of all crypto currencies combined is 104 billion, that's just 4 years of freekin' headphone sales. This really put things into perspective just how many headphones we all buy!

Is this why so much money is spent?

So if we are spending all of this money on our portable head speakers, perhaps it would be nice if we had some information with regards to the quality of what we are paying for. This is precisely what author Jeroen Breebaart has done for us. Jeroen took a look at the frequency response of various headphones on the market (as frequency response has been reported to be a major contributor to listener satisfaction [3].

What Was Found?

The frequency response was analyzed and is reported as the an average response based upon only one criterion, the price of the headphones:

Image From Figure 1

The headphones were grouped into classes of less expensive (4-64 USD), mid-range (64 - 279 USD), and most expensive (280 - 5120 USD!!!). Above we are looking at the frequency response of the various tested headphones, the average median response is the trace in the center, while the grey region around it is the variance between the different samples (the standard deviation). The one thing you can see from this, is that the variance in frequency range is the greatest for the cheaper headphones, while the more expensive ones have a much tighter range. Buy a cheap pair and it could have a really good frequency range, but it could also be pretty... not good. Where as if you spend a lot of money on a pair, at least you can take some comfort that the frequency range will be pretty good (but who spends 5K on headphones!?).

The author also took a look at how various headphones frequency responses fit to an "ideal" frequency response as determined in a previous publication. [4]

Image From Figure 3

Then root-mean square (RMS) analysis was used to look at the magnitude of the difference between the frequency trace of each headphone set with the idealized trace.

Image From Figure 3

Better headphones would have a smaller RMS value, indicating less deviation from the idealized frequency response. Looking at the plotted data above, do you see any trend in the RMS values decreasing with increasing cost of the headphones? I sure don't and neither did the author.

The Conclusion

Very simple, no correlation was observed between the cost of a pair of headphones and the measured frequencies that the headphones produced. More expensive headphones don't at all guarantee you better sound quality, in fact, there doesn't appear to be all that huge of a change from the cheaper sets to the more expensive ones (though there are clearly a few really crappy pairs that he tested!).

What Does This Mean For Me?

You shouldn't judge headphones based on their price, just look at the reviews. If a lot of people are saying that a set of reasonably priced headphones have really great sound they are probably telling the truth. You can likely pick up a killer set with out breaking the bank!

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Sources

1. http://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4984044
2. https://www.gminsights.com/pressrelease/earphone-and-headphone-market
3. http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=16486
4. http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17940

All Non Cited Images Are From Pixabay.com or Flickr.com And Are Available Under Creative Commons Licenses

Any Gifs Are From Giphy.com and Are Also Available for Use Under Creative Commons Licences

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