CHEAP headphones for listening to tuba on phone/laptop

[bloke]

I'm not necessarily interested in noise canceling. When I'm sitting in my tuba room listening to either New Orleans brass bands tunes' funky bass lines for a gig (that have never heard or memorized), or symphonic pieces that have not played before (such as one that I have to play in March which is extremely complicated), just putting the earphones on drowns out the TV in the next room, if it happens to be on at all. Other times, I like to play along with piano accompaniments that are on YouTube and pipe them through that mighty PA system that I mentioned. Sometimes I'm doing that while listening to myself through headphones whereas I might be making a temporary recording of myself playing along with what's coming out of the PA, this probably doesn't make sense, but I like the setup where I can hear the PA using non noise canceling headphones. It's just easier than running both through some sort of mixer (even though I have one) so that I hear both in the headphones. I like stuff that's less technology based, but that still works.

Any of you would be surprised at how good those crappy behind the ears ancient headphones are which I lost and just found again in Mrs bloke's nightstand. I have been listening to some old recordings of things that I had played with some other people, and - with really crappy headphones, and even some they're supposed to be good - I wasn't hearing very many errors. Thankfully - with the headphones that I'm discussing, I didn't hear all that many errors, but I heard every single error. Additionally, it's pretty shocking how those cheap headphones sound not too different from live.

[tokuno]

I bought Audio Technica ATH-M50x earcups for 3 of my kids (4th wanted ear buds), because I found a super clearance deal.
I borrowed a pair to listen to a Hovhaness symphony CD - probably 50 St. Helens or 22 City of Light - and was astounded to catch the sound of a musician flipping a page; had never heard that before on other sound systems. Audio Technica came highly recommended as "studio" headphones, and if you could rationalize a "buy once, cry once" purchase, I highly recommend them.
I visited the Marine band rooms at Pendleton, and noticed that they use Audio Technica gear.

[The Brute Squad]

Surely, these new-in-the-package ones are old as the hills...

My ears hurt (outside, not inside) just looking at that image. Had a couple pairs like that as a kid and every time I wore them, my whatever-you-call-the-area-where-the-earlobe-attaches-to-the-head always hurt afterward. Probably why I always preferred cans.

[bloke]

I flexed the plastic until they sat on my ears the way that I needed them to for comfort. The odd looking spiral actually sort of goes behind the head instead of over the top of the head.

Something to which I've never paid much attention is charts and graphs about headphones and what they do. It's sort of like when I read people's mechanical approaches to playing music. They may be able to turn everything into a statistic or a number, but I don't think that's really quite how music works. When I listen to headphones, I want to be able to hear details, and have things sound as realistic as a recording can manage to sound. I can't expect the sound to sound like how it sounds from sitting in the tuba chair, as that's a pretty unreasonable expectation. If the numbers published on the headphones look horrible to audio files, those headphones might possibly function in such a way to where I can hear things that I need to hear.

[peterbas]

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[Rick Denney]

I flexed the plastic until they sat on my ears the way that I needed them to for comfort. The odd looking spiral actually sort of goes behind the head instead of over the top of the head.

Something to which I've never paid much attention is charts and graphs about headphones and what they do. It's sort of like when I read people's mechanical approaches to playing music. They may be able to turn everything into a statistic or a number, but I don't think that's really quite how music works. When I listen to headphones, I want to be able to hear details, and have things sound as realistic as a recording can manage to sound. I can't expect the sound to sound like how it sounds from sitting in the tuba chair, as that's a pretty unreasonable expectation. If the numbers published on the headphones look horrible to audio files, those headphones might possibly function in such a way to where I can hear things that I need to hear.

Sean Olive at Harman International has performed quite a bit of research into headphone preferences among all sorts of listeners. As a result, Harman produced a characteristic spectral response curve that allows the headphones to sound like well-adjusted loudspeakers in the room. That curve emphasize some bass frequencies, which are difficult to develop inside such a small chamber.

That curve also accounts for the difficulty in measuring them. The usual fixture (made by GRAS) creates a model of a listener, but as researchers say, all models are false even if some are useful. So, the target curve is calibrated for the fixture as well.

Clarity is a different problem. Resonances at specific frequencies are undesirable in any transducer, but lots of both speakers and headphones have resonances in the mid-bass that make them sound boomy. But even without that, the kind of bass people want may not be desirable for tuba players who are evaluating tuba playing.

But just as a bit of a description of how they are properly measured, let me show some graphs from reviews of heaphones at Audio Science Review. Here's the the main spectral response on the GRAS fixture of the Sennheiser HD-650 ($400) headphones that they tested:



The heavy dashed line is the Harman preference curve that came out of Sean Olive's research. As you can see, the Sennheisers don't produce bass the way the preference model seems to want, but everywhere else they are perfect. And there are no resonances in the bass region. These do not sound boomy at all, and they are great for evaluating tuba playing. (I have the Drop HD-6xx version, much much cheaper but it's the same except for some cosmetics.) But these are waaaay above the Blokian Cost Tolerance Threshold.

Here are my Bose QC-35II headphones that I use on airplanes. The bass on these is more elevated, and these are not as detailed as the Sennheisers. But they are wireless and they cancel airplane noise effectively. And they are more private--the Sennheisers are open-back headphones like all Sennheisers. These are great for general listening more than for evaluating tuba performance.



Here are the Sony headphones I suggested in case Joe didn't find his preferred old ones.



These aren't as good, especially without equalization, but they are the best available under the Blokian Cost Tolerance Threshold. The bit of EQ would also help with bass clarity. These won't play loudly without distorting the bass, however.

What you don't want to see is a peak in the mid-bass. These Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones are much more expensive than the ones I recommended, but they would be terrible for tuba playing evaluation, or even just for listening.



The peak at 160 Hz will make them super-boomy. But, as with the cheaper Sony phones, these need the noise-canceling amplifier to be turned on, and the above test was with it turned off. (The same is true for the Bose headphones, but I use those wirelessly so there's no forgetting to turn them on.) When it was on, it was still elevated in the bass, but not nearly as peaky in the mid-bass:



These won't be as boomy but they would also not be particularly good for evaluating tuba playing, at least without some equalization.

Rick "would not want the bass as elevated as the Harman curve for most listening" Denney

[bloke]

Probably the greatest fear that I have of riding to a gig with a stranger is not that they are a bad driver (after all, most of them who I might ride with have driven for at least forty years), but that they might choose to play "music" on their "music" systems.

oh yeah...I occasionally ride with a lefty who has an EV, and (being of the same mindset) they don't play "music", but (being a lefty - ie. childish - EV owner, they always have to show of their car's "rocket-like" acceleration - even though they tell me that they bought that car to save the planet and to get "no cost, and no cost to the environment" fuel.

bloke "whatever...I typically quickly flip past that rhetoric on TV, but it's not difficult to soon get them to talk about something other than their car...oh yeah: and there's absolutely no way that I would ride with them to a gig in cold weather or that's more than 50 miles r/t."

[gocsick]

I occasionally ride with a lefty who has an EV, and (being of the same mindset) they don't play "music", but (being a lefty - ie. childish - EV owner, they always have to show of their car's "rocket-like" acceleration - even though they tell me that they bought that car to save the planet and to get "no cost, and no cost to the environment" fuel.

bloke "whatever...I typically quickly flip past that rhetoric on TV, but it's not difficult to soon get them to talk about something other than their car...oh yeah: and there's absolutely no way that I would ride with them to a gig in cold weather or that's more than 50 miles r/t."

As a lefty commie pinko bastard myself, I can tell you that EV idiots embarrass us the same way that morons who buy big diesel pavement queens to roll coal embarrasses your average farmer. From an engineering POV, EVs only make sense if you have a good solar setup or are getting your power 100% nuclear. Otherwise you have a combustion engine with more environmentally damaging steps, but hey you look cool.

It is really hard to beat the energy density in a gallon of gas.

[bloke]

As a lefty commie pinko bastard myself, I can tell you that EV idiots embarrass us the same way that morons who buy big diesel pavement queens to roll coal embarrasses your average farmer. From an engineering POV, EVs only make sense if you have a good solar setup or are getting your power 100% nuclear. Otherwise you have a combustion engine with more environmentally damaging steps, but hey you look cool.

It is really hard to beat the energy density in a gallon of gas.

You and I would get along just fine. I'd wager that both of us acknowledge that most of the people for whom we vote: we reluctantly vote for them. My main attraction to the orange man is that almost everyone in Washington DC hates him, and I'm one of those "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" types of people.

Our cars are
- a manual shift 33 miles per gallon Toyota
- a manual shift perhaps 25 miles per gallon Honda Element with the rear seats removed, so it's sort of functions as my wife's work van, and
- we also have a 6 cylinder full size Chevy work van which is automatic.

None of them are theft targets, particularly, because they are all old and most thieves don't know how to drive two of them. We actually have a fourth old Toyota which is manual which gets up to 40 miles per gallon, but we've loaned it out to one of my music directors who lives in two countries. It saves him an incredible amount of car rental money, and he's keeping that car running well and clean for us, as well as paying the insurance. If we had to have it, I would ask for it back, but we don't need it and we don't want to sell it.

[gocsick]

Our cars are
- a manual shift 33 miles per gallon Toyota
- a manual shift perhaps 25 miles per gallon Honda Element with the rear seats removed, so it's sort of functions as my wife's work van, and
- we also have a 6 cylinder full size Chevy work van which is automatic.

Keeping an old car on the road is actually more environmentally sustainable most of the time due to the high environmental impact of manufacturing new vehicles. That counts for traditional pollution and carbon impact as well (https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/218). So you can wear your hippie tree-hugger badge with pride.

[bloke]

Most of the things we do around here on this property are far more environmentally beneficial and minimally environmentally harmful compared to the overwhelming majority of people who spew rhetoric regarding these things.

Most people aren't aware that the overwhelming majority of recycling crap is buried or burned up, along with all the other garbage. Otherwise it's shipped off to third world countries where they dump it in their rivers and it ends up in the ocean. So spending the time to recycle causes the human body to expand additional energy and give off additional carbon dioxide which ends up in the atmosphere.

Failing to cut down trees and failing to make them into things also allows them to die, fall and rot, which gives off a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[bloke]

I have a long time friend who's an excellent recording engineer and does a lot of on-location recording. He's like me, in that he doesn't shop by price or necessarily by charts and graphs, but by how well something works for him. He and I think a lot alike about stuff like that, and he just told me that these 13 buck ones are remarkably good, if anyone else might be interested...

JVC HA-S160R

[Dan Tuba]

These are pretty amazing for the price.
OneOdio A71 Hi-Res Studio Recording Headphones - Wired Over Ear Headphones with SharePort, Professional Monitoring & Mixing Foldable Headphones with Stereo Sound (Black) https://a.co/d/bDq561E

[smitwil1]

Koss Porta Pro on Amazon. The look says "I got these in the '80s" but the sound is clean, not bass-heavy, but they're open--no isolation from ambient sounds. The earpads are replacable (Yaxi earpads) and if you're like me and missing some of your high range, you can cut a dime-sized hole in the center of the earpads to provide a subtle boost to the highs.

Sorry to hear that you "lost" your MDR-7506. I have the MDR-V6 from 1993 and will keep using them as long as I can find replacement earpads for them. Like a nice pocket knife, I'd only lend it to my closest of friends and probably only if I was in the same room with them at the time.

They're out of your stated price range but the Grado SR60 are a good bang-for-the-buck headphone with a bit of high-end emphasis. Again, open design so you hear everything around you and those around you hear what you're listening to, too.

[bloke]

Well, as I stated in a update a friend of mine is gifting me some 7506 headphones, and all I have to do is repair the part that goes over the top of my head on that set.

He's the same one that just showed me those $13 JVC ones that he uses when recording on site, as well as when mixing or editing.

[GC]

Though I've changed to a good set of Bluetooth Sony phones, I still like the fidelity of my V6's. The one thing I don't like about them is that the heavy coiled cord is permanently attached and can't be unplugged and replaced with a lighter straight cord.

[bloke]

Back in the EARLY 1970's, I bought a pair of KOSS headphones that - at that time - I thought sounded pretty darn good (remember "cassette decks with Dolby" )
Those are probably busted, and in an old trunk in the basement.

response (apparently...??) tops out at 16000 hz, but (well...) Cassette decks "Dolby'ed the $h!t" out of the sound, so probably not much above that made it to the output plug.

These look like them, and - apparently - are "K6"...(??)

[Rick Denney]

I had a pair of Koss headphones back in the same deeps of time, but they were not the better Pro4/A or AA of the day. I can't find them in their history, so they must not have been too proud of them. The ear cushions are completely collapsed and irreplaceable. Also Koss headphones were designed for 8-16-ohm headphone amps, which are by now fairly obsolete. Koss is still in business, and their current phones are reasonably priced and okay, but others have left them behind.

Those JVC cheapies might be just fine for specific things--JVC is at least a company that knows how to make audio things.

As to your usual anti-technical ranting, there is so much opinion about audio equipment that is based on sighted bias, and reviewers are so good at throwing adjectives on things that they only think they can detect, that your opinion is probably good but why should anyone trust it? Believe me, those adjective-laden reviewers out there have all the same credentials you do and then some, plus the experience of having reviewed hundreds of products. And time and time again, those reviews are shown to be phantoms when subjected to anything like blind testing where they can't actually see what they are reviewing. Yes, I make my own opinions, which is why I didn't discuss anything I don't actually own myself, but backing those impressions up with actual measurements shouldn't be something you laugh at.

Rick "the whole audio business has been ruined by mystical subjective reviews driven by who-knows-what motives" Denney

[peterbas]

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[bloke]

The frequency response charts and such seem to me to be about as useful as a frequency output chart of a tuba or a fiddle. Can I hear it? Can I hear everything that I expect to hear and need to hear? Does it sound good?

I grew up - beginning in elementary school (fourth grade or so) - with a salvaged turntable that I found in a group of six or seven that were shipped in styrofoam that were thrown away (minot damage) behind a audiofile store. They were okay quality ones that had ceramic cartridges, and I made one work properly including the mechanics of the changer mechanism, wired it into a little tube amplifier which I salvaged from an old radio with a busted tuner, and put a little 6-in speaker from that same radio on the front of a box that I made out of Masonite, and I put rubber cement on the speaker paper to boost the bass. (Thinking back, I learned the little bit that I learned about wiring together amplifier stuff as well as wiring together 110 volt stuff from my much-older brother, and I believe that I learned how to build that Masonite box with a custom cut out on top - to accommodate - the turntable as well as the speaker and the amplifier from watching my dad make cabinet things out in his shop. (No one needs to think that I was some little "junior genius", because Masonite is pretty easy to cut out.) That improvised rig was what I had used to grab chord changes, bass lines, guitar solos, and such off of 45s and LPs, so that our kiddie garage band could play songs. When I got a Kenwood Dolby tape deck, a (pretty low wattage...that stuff was EXPENSIVE) Pioneer transistor receiver, a pair of Altec speakers, and those KOSS headphones, I thought I was in heaven.

Today, the receiver that I have is a $10 thrift store Radio Shack Realistic transistor receiver from who knows how far back (the same era), but I believe it's at least 200W, I still have the Altec speakers, and I still have a cassette deck from way back but it's a "double" - which all of us bought back then to make copies of other tapes (as others recall that). I also have a really high-end old reel-to-reel Japanese deck (I loan it out from time to time to people who want to digitize old recordings they found in their grandparents' homes and such). I have an old Phillips turntable (audiophile Shure cartridge for the time) that I bought when I bought all that other stuff, but someone gave me another one that's set up for converting LPs to digital. I believe I was gifted that at least fifteen years ago or more, but I still haven't even used it once. Everything's on YouTube, so there doesn't seem to be a point in using it. YouTube audio quality is not the highest, but it's good enough for me to do the stuff that I need to do, which is to learn pieces I'm scheduled to play which I don't yet know - whether they are symphonic, whether they are New Orleans Brass band funky bass lines, jazz tune chord changes, or whatever they are. I guess I'm not any sort of audiophie, but only an audio blue-collar. I also suspect that my 67-year-old ears might not be quite as good as they were as 37-year-old years, though - over the years - I have tried to use ear protection with those other types of headphones (which measure decibels in how few make it through) when I've thought it was important to do so.

Anyway, >> I've enjoyed reading all the opinions about headphones that are nicer than ones that I would probably buy, I managed to track down the missing ones that I had been using, and it looks like I'm going to get some decent Sony 7XXX ones again, so it looks like I'm fixed up pretty good , and I'm thankful.