Are you overwhelmed by the flood of regular and wireless headphones? You never heard of the terms open and closed headphones or dynamic and static transducers? This overview will help you select the perfect model.
Headphones come in many styles and designs. The smallest type are in-ear headphones. These headphones are plugged inside the ear. Some models have a bracket that wraps around the ear. These in-ear headphones are often bundled with iPods and other MP3 players and can easily be placed in a pocket. The next size up are lightweight headphones that sit on the ear and are connected by an elastic frame. This headpiece either sits on top of the head or wraps around the neck. If you are on a tight budget then you should consider one of these headphones, some models are designed to absorb external noise.
If you are able to spend more, you could look at medium-end headphones which are larger than these very small type headphones. Each earpiece has an ear cushion that depending on the model either sits on top of your ears or wraps around your ears. The second type lowers the pressure on the ear. Therefore many people prefer this design. If you feel you would like to go with this type of headphones, you will then need to decide whether to go with an open, semi-open or closed design. An open design means that the audio can penetrate from the transducer to the outside and also cross-couple into the other earpiece. While some people feel that an open design sounds light, a closed design will tend to absorb exterior noise more and provide better insulation between the two earpieces.
Most of today’s headphones are so-called dynamic headphones. Dynamic refers to the type of transducer that is used. The second more expensive type which requires special headphone amplifiers are static headphones.
If you prefer freedom of movement then you should take a look at wireless headphones. Wireless headphones cut the cord. This means that you have full freedom of movement which is essential if your audio source is not mobile. One type of wireless headphones are Bluetooth headphones. These headphones can be used with cell phones and other Bluetooth-enabled devices. These headphones are typically fairly small but do not offer the same sort of audio quality as medium to high-end headphones.
Other wireless headphones include inexpensive 900 MHz models which use FM transmission and more advanced digital wireless headphones which work at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. The main drawback of FM headphones is a noticeable hissing, audio distortion and fairly high susceptibility to interference which I caused by the transmission.
Digital models such as the Amphony headphones will encode the audio into data prior to transmission which makes these models the best choice in terms of sound quality and robustness against interference. Models which use the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band offer the lowest amount of problems with radio-frequency interference from competing devices.
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