How To Buy The Right Headphones

A top-notch MP3 player is only half of the audio equation. No matter what your budget, we've got advice on picking the best headphones to maximize your listening experience—along with reviews of 35 top pairs. These days, some people happily spend as much as half a grand on a new MP3 player with an estimated lifespan of around three years, yet the question I'm asked most often is still, "What's the cheapest pair of headphones I can buy that don't completely suck?" Headphones, earbuds, and earphones (I'll describe the difference between them in a bit) are generally viewed as the least essential link in the musical chain—the part you can skimp on. In reality, your headphones are the most important link in that chain: A quality pair can have an even larger impact than the player itself on how your tunes will sound. Also, if well cared for, they will long outlive your planned-to-be-obsolete digital audio player. And you don't have to break the bank, either. For $400 or less, you can get both a good player and a high-quality pair of 'phones and really begin to enjoy all the excellent audio you've been missing. Thanks to the iPod's wild popularity, those trademark white earbuds have become ubiquitous. Even so, earbuds are not an ideal listening option, since they don't enter the ear canal and as a result don't create a true seal. In fact, they're more likely to be placed at an odd angle, often destroying the balance of the audio mix—and you can forget about getting solid bass response. Earphones, on the other hand, sit further in your ear canal, creating a better seal—and they're often more comfortable to wear, since they tend to stay in place better than earbuds. Headphones, by contrast, are over-the-head (or behind-the-head) speakers that sit on the ear. Circumaural models create a seal with cups around the entire ear, whereas open, or supra-aural, headphones sit directly on the ear without forming a seal. Now let's take a look at some better alternatives to those lousy stock-issue earbuds. These selections consist mostly of earphones, which seem to have won the popularity war over other styles, but you'll also find excellent and affordable headphones, noise-canceling, and wireless options as well. Earphones As explained above, earbuds aren't the best way to get the most from your music. For $40, you could have a decent pair of earphones, instead. If you're looking for booming bass on a budget, there are a few options between $40-50. They don't deliver the most accurate sonic experience, but they certainly feature deep, resonant low end-perfect for hip-hop and electronic music-which is a new development in affordable earphones. Generally speaking, you won't find true audio quality in earphones until you pass the $50 mark. In the $50 to $150 price range, you can expect earphones that fit well, deliver powerful bass and crisp treble, and come with a variety of ear tips in different sizes to ensure a good seal. Ultimate Ears, Sennheiser, Shure, and Monster are the main players in this category. If you're more about accuracy than booming bass, you'll want "flat-response" pairs that offer a more pure, less sculpted audio signal. Etymotic's $300 ER-4S is our flat-response earphone benchmark, and you'll find it in many of our HEAD Acoustics graphs as a comparison pair. In this same price range, you should expect well-matched left and right earphones, as well as better definition on the lowest and highest frequencies. Etymotic makes the flattest pair in this range, but there are plenty of options that offer more low-end without boosting too much. Earphones can be far more expensive than a couple hundred dollars, however—the UE 11 Pro will cost you $1,150. They're a custom-molded pair with subwoofers added in each ear for more accurate deep bass response. These are my favorite earphones, period. (At that price, they'd better be!) We also include them in several of our test graphs so you can see how the pair we're reviewing compares to an ideal, but less flat, frequency-response curve. Headphones When it comes to consumer headphones, two companies in particular, Grado and Sennheiser, truly stand out from the crowd. Grado makes supra-aural (and some hybrid) headphones that range from $70-$1,000. The Grado GS1000 pair, with its mix of supra-aural and circumaural design, delivers audio that sounds about as good as it possibly can. Even so, at $995 the GS1000 isn't for everyone: They're not very portable, and you can't ignore the wooden earpieces. (I actually think they look pretty cool, and luckily, Grado has more affordable options, like the sub-$100 SR60.) Sennheiser also makes several different types of headphones in a wide price range—a few options are listed below. Generally, headphones should be able to reproduce richer low end since they have larger drivers than earphones and they don't rely on an in-ear seal to deliver their output. Noise-Canceling Headphones and Earphones You might try to dismiss the din of the outside world by cranking up the volume, but the best solution for saving your sanity and your ears is to invest in a pair of noise-canceling headphones, so you can enjoy your audio at much lower volumes. Bose's QuietComfort 15 headphones, our Editor's Choice, offer fantastic noise cancellation, and they sound pretty decent—but they will set you back about $300. Creative's Aurvana X-Fi Noise Canceling Headphones are our former Editors' Choice—they sound better than the QuietComfort series and deliver almost-as-good noise reduction for $50 less. There are several competitors in this field, so it's worth perusing. It's also important to note: Noise-canceling headphones are generally not for audiophiles—they put function (blocking outside noise) first, and sound quality second. They tend to sound less compelling than similarly priced headphones without the noise-cancellation circuitry. Plus, several in-ear earphone pairs offer substantial passive noise reduction by basically functioning as earplugs. Wireless Headphones There's no disputing that wireless headphones can be convenient in any situation where you don't want to deal with dangling cables—like the gym, for example. Unfortunately, Bluetooth wireless stereo audio doesn't measure up when compared with the tried-and-true wired kind. This is because the data signal containing Bluetooth audio is extremely compressed and therefore can't carry enough information to deliver rich sound. But if you absolutely abhor wires, the reasonably priced $130 Motorola MotoROKR S9-HD or Altec Lansing's $100 BackBeat aren't bad, and they both double as headsets to let you answer cell-phone calls. For higher-quality wireless sound, the Kleer company, however, has developed a closely guarded RF-based audio technology (of the same name) that sounds fantastic. The pricey $600 Sennheiser MX W1 was the first quality pair of earphones to use Kleer, and Sleek Audio has now incorporated it as well. And as Sennheiser teased at CES 2010, more affordable pairs are on the way.