Buyer's guide to headphones

Not surprisingly, a lot of it comes down to finding the right pair of headphones. 'Right' means both good-sounding and matched to your head. Comfort is vastly important since you actually wear them, but how the sound matches your personal aural preferences is also an issue. Luckily, there are many types, makes and models to choose from.

Types of headphone

Let's start with the basic categories of headphone. They can be open back or closed back types: that's pretty self explanatory and you can usually tell the difference by looking at them. Open back models lets sound out of the back side of each earpiece, which means on the one hand that other people in the same room hear more of what you're listening to, and you hear more of what's going on around you.

So surely closed back is preferable in all ways, then? Well, no. The problem is that closing the back causes all sorts of acoustical problems and tends to make the sound rather 'chesty', a bit like the sound you might get if you stood inside a wardrobe and spoke. On the whole, closed back models are the solution to a specific problem - acoustic isolation. Great in aircraft and other noisy environments, or for listening to music while your kids watch TV in the same room, less good for ultimate fidelity.

Circumaurals from Beyer: click for bigger pic

The other categories are supra-aural and circumaural. Supra- models sit on your ears while circum- means that the earpads are large enough to surround your ears so that the pressure is on the sides of your head - ideally there should be no contact with you ears at all.

The choice is a personal one. Fans of circumaurals (including this writer) often find supra-aural headphones catastrophically uncomfortable after half an hour or so, but supra-users cite the unnatural sense of constriction around the ears due to circums as being far more inconvenient. It's clearly up to the shape and toughness of your ears, among other things, and you can only experiment. OK, there is actually one more category - in-ear phones, as supplied with most portables. In truth, the best of these (especially those sold as after-market accessories by respectable headphone makers such as Sennheiser) can sound quite good, but if it's real fidelity you're after it's probably better to stick to traditional over-the-ears types.

In-ear version: click for bigger pic

Prices

Headphone prices range from a packet of cigs to thousands of pounds. The more esoteric models can be fabulous, although as so often with really upmarket audio individual reactions for and against particular models can be strong. Really cheap headphones, below about £30, pretty much give you what you pay for: you'll hear something recognisable and probably even quite pleasant but it's not great fidelity. The really happening part of the market, though, is the midrange, say £30 to £300, and the great news is that you can get sound that in many ways rivals that of very much more expensive speakers for as little as £100.

Apart from the big names such as Sony and Philips, headphones are produced in large numbers by a few specialists including AKG, Beyer and Sennheiser. All these makers, along with smaller firms such as Grado, produce some really high quality headphones in various combinations of open, closed, supra and circumaural. So what to listen out for?

Cheaper models often have a bit of a lift to the treble, which sounds impressive at first but can become very tiring to listen to after a few minutes. Speech really shows this up, with a 'spitty' quality to it that's not nice. By contrast, the best headphones can sound quite dull at first and it's only after a while that you realise the treble's definitely all there, it's just not being forced on you all the time. The other quality that becomes evident as one increases the budget is the general feeling of smoothness and detail to the sound, a bit like the difference between a photograph and a copy of it made on a low-resolution printer.

Sennheiser HD570 Symphony

On the whole, above £100 you'll get satisfactory sound, though it's well worth comparing models for performance and comfort, and there is still a well marked trend upwards in quality with price. Below that figure, it's definitely worth having a good listen before parting with the cash. Some models such as the DTX range from Beyer (£45 - £65) can give a very fine account of the music, but there are also some around the price which are pretty harsh and horrid. Headphones are often sold in smart display packs, but don't let that put you off asking the dealer to split a pack open (if there isn't a demonstration pair available, which arguably there should be) to let you have a listen. You wouldn't buy a suit without trying it on, and headphones are just as personal.

Headphone amplifiers

To conclude, a quick word about headphone amplifiers. Most people use headphones with the front-panel output on CD players or perhaps on the main amp, but dedicated headphone amplifiers exist which add flexibility and can lift quality quite noticeably.

Prices range from around £100 to well over £1000, and if you find you like headphone listening after all one of these can be a good investment. But better buy the headphones first!