[swaffleman]

One thing I've noticed,

I have a pair of headphones that have a very punchy, articulate bass response (PX 200 II's,), but not much raw volume from what I can discern. Some untrained ears think they have no bass, although I quite like their bass response and overall coverage.

I have other headphones that have more pure volume but are not as articulate.

I have noticed that in environments where I am walking and I have low frequency sound around me (such as passing cars, etc), the articulation wins over the pure volume as far as being heard goes. Pure volume is more likely to be drowned out by outside sounds of a similar range, but the the actual articulation is almost always still audible.

How is that sort of sound achieved over the other? It seems like you cannot really account for articulation by looking at a frequency response graph. I am rather uneducated, though.

-Steve

 

[Killcomic]

First of all, I’m a complete newb at this, but I would imagine that less articulate headphones tend to present bass as just a muddy rumble with little variation. I would theorise this would make your brain simply stack it with the rest of the background noise and ignore it, whereas the more articulate headphone would have variation, this would cause your brain to pay attention as it could be an important sound you need to notice.
Perhaps a frequency response graph would not help a lot (but it could clue you in if it has an elevated 500hz response), but I imagine it would be something that measuring the decay could certainly reveal.
Do take this with a grain of salt as this is just conjecture. I’m sure someone with more knowledge could point out the flaws in my post.

 

[bigshot]

I have PX-200s myself. They have a pretty pronounced mid bass hump- somewhere in the neighborhood of 15dB, and they don't have a lot of low bass. Bass is always the downfall of inexpensive portable cans. They make up for that with boosts in the mid bass. Bass is the downfall of most headphones actually. Whether traffic interferes might have more to do with isolation or the volume you are playing at, than the response of the headphones. The PX-200s don't have much isolation at all.