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Most Important Aspect of Headphones

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When we talk about headphones, we talk about comfort, bass, sound leakage, and so on and so forth. What components do you think are the most important?
I want you to make a list from the most to the least valuable factors. I'll give you my list as an example, but you don't have to take into account the same factors that I did. Feel free to add or subtract whatever you please. (I think I missed a lot of stuff, anyways.)
  1. Comfort/Fit
  2. Mids [quality]
  3. Treble [quality]
  4. Treble [quantity]
  5. Bass [quality]
  6. Mids [quantity]
  7. Bass [quantity]
  8. Replaceable cable
  9. Imaging/Soundstage
  10. Aesthetics/Build
  11. Impedance
  12. Weight
  13. Portability
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Armaegis
127
Jul 4, 2016
Rather than get into listing the typical culprits, I want to touch on a couple things that people may overlook if they're stuck in the mindset of singular parameters. a) Tonal balance: In general, the overall shape of the frequency response. A bit more specifically, transitioning from region to region (any area, not just the fuzzy concepts of bass/mids/treble). For most people, FR is the first (and easiest) thing to notice with headphones. b) Distortion and phase error: harmonic and intermodular distortion, diaphragm breakup, and phase deviations are all aspects that move the reproduced sound away from the input signal in a manner that isn't (directly) related to the frequency response. Being able to decipher things in this category is more difficult than tonal changes. c) Channel matching: mismatched sides, even by one or two dB, can create a very large change in sonic perception and is often mistaken as a poor FR or distortion.
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