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Can someone tell me everything I need to know about headphones in one response? I want to know things like, what specifically an amp does and why some headphones need it, what is a DAC; what is SQ (sound quality I think?).
Basically I thought all you needed were a decent pair of headphones and an iPod to have a good time. Now I'm hearing about all this extra hocus pocus that you can apply to make your music experience even better. Anyone who can help me out I'd really appreciate it.
Alright I'm gonna try here.
And amp amplifies for music, betcha didn't know that. OK well essentially, some headphones are less efficient than others. The higher the impedance the more juice its going to need. The lower impedance means it needs less. Some speak of sound discrepancies in the two, i can talk. Extremely low impedance headphones are sensitive to the amps output impedance. High impedance headphones are often finicky about which amps play well with them.
A DAC is a digital to analogue converter. It takes your music as binary code and transfers it to analogue so you can actually hear it. And device that plays music (i.e ipod, mo3 player etc) anything with a headphone jack uses a dac. These too come in varying qualities and prices.
Frequency response (Hertz range) is how high/low a headphone can produce sound. However 20-20kHz is the extent of human hearing so don't worry about anything above and below it.
Open cans typically have bigger sound stage but less bass and closed cans are pretty much the exact opposite, just as a rule of thumb.
Um..well there's a TON more, but that's a bit of a crash course. You may also want to look up some terms that describe sound. warm dark, sibilant, etc. I would pay a little less attention to hard stats and more to review. Oh and if you're using apple always have your music in apple lossless format.
