Amplifiers, speakers, headphones, cables, music players, DACs and sound cards…
Experiencing quality music perfectly; It occurs as a result of connecting many equipments together in a chain.
Although the equipment we use today consists mostly of our phones, computers and wireless headphones, these devices are not as effective as wired headphones equipped with high potential drivers that you can pair with a quality amp / dac combination.
The goal of a person who wants to be an audiophile; usually “Hearing Music In Its Purest Form”.
High dynamic range, high resolution, low Signal-to-Noise ratio so you can truly hear the music purely; In short, you need linear elements where the signal will suffer minimal distortion from the source until it reaches your ear.
The internal sound cards of our mobile devices and computers are very mediocre compared to external Dac/Amps. Such solutions do not produce very good results for seasoned listeners at the end of the day. There are many elements that exist to ensure our enjoyment of listening to music. All of these elements make up our personal equipment chain. As we encounter everywhere in life, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
When building your system, you must first select your headphone/speaker, then your amp/dac. When we talk about headphones, here are two values in particular; Impedance and Sensitivity values are the star criteria of deciding how high output power equipment we will choose.
The higher the impedance of a headset, the more theoretically it wants to be driven with higher power. Sensitivity, on the other hand, is a measurement related to how loud the same headphone reaches when it is exposed to unit power and measured from unit distance. Here, the concept of efficiency can also be mentioned. As it can be understood, equipment that can reach higher volume with the same amount of power; will be more efficient.
We are not generally people who listen to only one type of music. We may find ourselves listening to very different types of music from moment to moment. Naturally, each species has its own requirements. For example, while the equipment you use while listening to classical music produces very intense Sub-Bass may harm the dynamics of the genre, when you switch to electronic music listening, the opposite will be the case.
We audiophiles start this hobby because we like to listen to “music”. Next, we go in search of the selected headset for the music to be produced. As we progress here, we are happy to encounter some headphones with successful technical performance. What we usually notice at this stage is that each earphone produces that music we love in a different tone.
At this point, we ask ourselves the following question; What kind of sound do I like? To find the answer, we listen to many different headphones and get a little more insight into the technical performance parameters. As we grasp them, concepts such as resolution, stage width, detail performance , we observe that the potential of the headset changes according to the matched source (Computer, Phone), and we search for a source that will provide high potential, an amplifier. The excitement of listening with better equipment is what makes us happy.
Until you get the perfect equipment; Unfortunately, what we listen to is the equipment we use rather than the music itself.
This is an exciting, deep and meaningful path to learn from. Like many hobbies, this hobby has many values that it adds to the person. Art; Being in the arts is very meaningful in itself. What we want most as audiophiles; to maximize the pleasure that this tremendous sense and hearing arouses in us. Not knowing is bliss is unfortunately a true saying. For many of us, years ago, being able to dance completely immersed in the music, even with a phone headset, was a bliss. Now we are after real happiness. Yes, we listen to equipment and yes, we are ready to dive into the music more intensely than anyone else when appropriate.
When choosing a headset; we consider many criteria such as sound character, technical performance, price range, comfort, material quality, design, electronic features.
The vast majority of the options we choose between them are usually closed-back headphones with dynamic drivers.
So how many different types of headphones are there actually?
In essence, we can divide the headphones into 2 at first. As you can tell, these are On-Ear and In-Ear Hi-Fi headphones. On-ear Hi-Fi headphones are divided into 2; In the form of Open-Back Hi-Fi Headphones and Closed-Back Hi-Fi Headphones.
