Headphones, earbuds, oh my!

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You want to be able to listen to your audiobook/podcast/music privately, without bothering anyone else? Get a set of headphones. Easy, right? Well, yeah, it can be if you buy the first thing you see, but if you start looking around you’ll likely find a bewildering array of types and terms and options. Wired, wireless, over-ear, in-ear, what? And different uses sometimes require different specifications.

If you want to have your TV sound play through your headphones you want their mouths to be in sync with the sound you’re hearing. If you have a high quality recording you probably want to hear all the nuance in the track.

So let’s get some definitions out of the way. Headphones can be put into several different types of classifications. There are “over-ear”, “on-ear”, “in-ear”, “open-ear” and “bone conduction.” Then there are codecs and latency. Then there are special uses, like that TV thing I mentioned.

Over-ear go over your ears, covering them completely with cups that rest against your head. They tend to mute the sound around you by virtue of the fact that they seal around your ears. They can be wired or wireless and they can have a microphone so you can use them on a phone call, for instance. A wired over-ear is https://go.ttot.link/WiredOverEar.

On-ear rest on your ears. They don’t surround your ears the way over-ear do. They tend to mute the sound around you but not nearly as well as over-ear. They can be wired or wireless and can have a microphone. An example of a wired on-ear is https://go.ttot.link/WiredOnEar.

In-ear, often called earbuds, have a protrusion that goes into your ear and they generally, but not always, provide a seal so that you are, as with over-ear, isolated from sounds around you. They can be wired or wireless and can have a microphone. An example is https://go.ttot.link/WiredInEar.

These three types tend to give the best sound with good bass, mainly because they project more of less directly into your ear canal.

Bone conduction headphones sit against the bones in front of your ears and vibrate. The vibrations are carried to the part of your inner ear that is responsible for interpreting the vibrations as sound. I know some people that swear by these, but I have never been happy with them — the vibrations tickle! Nonetheless, I tell you about them so you’ll have a more or less complete picture. A example is https://go.ttot.link/BoneConduction.

Personally, unless I’m really listening to some high quality tracks (FLAC, remember?) I prefer open-ear. These tend to sit outside of your ears, the speakers pointing at your ears. I like them because I’m not cut off from my surroundings yet I can still hear my music. They tend to not provide the best fidelity but are passable, in my opinion, for casual listening. They can be wired or wireless and can have a microphone. An example is https://go.ttot.link/WirelessOpenEar.

Today, wireless in headphones means Bluetooth. What is that? In short, a transmitter sends sound over the air to a receiver. You’ll often see a number associated with Bluetooth, like 4 or 5 or 5.1 or 5.2. That’s the version — Bluetooth has been around a long time and has undergone quite a few updates — 5.2 is the newest. The transmitter and receiver can use different versions — they all work with each other. An older version just won’t be able to do some of the things that a newer version offers. Like what? Well, Bluetooth 5.0 made some changes to Bluetooth LE that allows headphones to connect and use Bluetooth LE. True to its name, Bluetooth LE requires less power so your headphones battery will last longer. Don’t have a Bluetooth 5 headphone? No big deal. It will still connect and work, but will use more battery than an LE capable headphone.

You may also read about Bluetooth “profiles.” In general you don’t need to worry about them. The basic profiles that allow you to make and receive phone calls, listen to music and start, stop, skip tracks and change volume are present in every Bluetooth headphone I’ve seen.

You will also likely see references to a codec or codecs. A codec is how the sound is encoded before it’s sent to your headphones. Some codecs are high quality that can provide near perfect reproduction of the sound but all codecs reproduce pretty well — only with high quality headphones and high quality source material would you likely be able to detect a difference in quality.

You may also see a reference to “latency” which is the delay between the time the sound is sent to your receiver (headphone) and the time you actually hear the sound. If you want to watch a video (e.g. Youtube, Netflix) if the latency is high you’ll notice a difference between lip movement and what you hear. Some codecs are optimized to provide low latency but pretty much any codec can provide low latency if implemented with latency in mind. And most headphones nowadays keep their latency low enough to not be a problem, but if you think you’ll want to use your headphones to watch videos, pay attention to what is said in product descriptions and comments. This problem does not exist with wired headphones so if you don’t mind being tethered to your phone/tablet, you can sidestep the whole issue.

OK, got all that? Deep breath, we’re almost done…

One other thing to briefly talk about is noise cancellation. Many people make a big deal about this. ANC is Active Noise Cancellation as opposed to PNC or Passive Noise Cancellation. Headphones with ANC analyze the outside sounds and try to generate sound waves that cancel out those sounds, leaving the sound it’s receiving from your phone as the only thing you hear. It’s never perfect and I generally don’t care for it because of its imperfection. It requires power so it will decrease your available time on battery. Passive Noise Cancellation deadens outside sounds by virtue of the seal the headphones make with your ears so it requires no additional power.

By now you’re either very confused or are getting a handle on the various elements that can be taken into account when it comes to selecting headphones/earbuds.

That’s it for this week. Note that my intent with these columns is to spark your curiosity, give you enough information to get started, and arm you with the necessary keywords so you’ll understand the basics and are equipped to search for more detailed information.

Email me with questions, comments, suggestions, requests for future columns, whatever at [email protected] and don’t forget that I maintain links to the original columns with live, clickable links to all the references at https://go.ttot.link/TGColumns+Links or https://go.ttot.link/TGC+L. It should be updated shortly after this column appears online.

Tony Sumrall, a Hillsboro native whose parents ran the former Highland Lanes bowling alley, is a maker with both leadership and technical skills. He’s been in the computing arena since his graduation from Miami University with a bachelor’s dgree in systems analysis, working for and with companies ranging in size from five to hundreds of thousands of employees. He holds five patents and lives and thrives in Silicon Valley which feeds his love for all things tech.

Tony Sumrall Contributing columnist
https://www.timesgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2022/06/web1_Summrall-Tony-mug-3.jpgTony Sumrall Contributing columnist

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