Selecting The Perfect Headphones – A Quick Reference For Novices.

Are you overwhelmed by the flood of regular and wireless headphones? You never heard of the terms open and closed headphones or dynamic and static transducers? This overview will help you select the perfect model.

Headphones are available in many different styles. In terms of design, the smallest type headphones are in-ear headphones which are plugged into the ear, some of these have a bracket that wraps around the ear. These type headphones can easily be stored in a pocket. They are often bundled with iPods or MP3 players. Another type of headphones which are larger than in-ear headphones sit on the ear and have an elastic frame which either sits on the head or wraps around the neck. If you are on a tight budget then you should consider one of these headphones, some models are designed to absorb external noise.

Medium-end headphones are an option if you are able to spend a little more and offer better sound quality. The earpieces have ear cushions to improve the wearing comfort. These ear cushions are either located on your ear or around your ear. The second design eliminates the pressure on the ears and is preferred by many people. Next you will have to decide whether you want to go with an open design where the audio can penetrate from the transducer to the outside or a closed design. An open design is perceived by some people to have a light sound quality. A closed design will prevent the audio from disturbing bystanders. A closed design also helps block out exterior noise.

Today’s headphones are dynamic headphones for the most part. Dynamic indicates what type of transducer is used. The second more expensive type which requires special headphone amplifiers are static headphones.

Wireless headphones are another option which eliminate the headphone cord. Bluetooth headphones are one type of wireless headphones and work with Bluetooth-enabled devices and cell phones. These headphones are typically fairly small but do not offer the same sort of audio quality as medium to high-end headphones.

Other wireless headphones include FM type models which normally work at 900 MHz and digital wireless headphones which work at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. FM type models are the least expensive option of wireless headphones. In addition to noticeable hissing and distortion, FM type wireless headphones are also very susceptible to wireless interference.

Digital models such as the Amphony headphones will encode the audio into data prior to transmission which makes these models the best choice in terms of sound quality and robustness against interference. Models which use the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band offer the lowest amount of problems with radio-frequency interference from competing devices.