What to Listen for When Choosing Studio Headphones

When choosing headphones for audio work, most people start with features. Open-back or closed-back? Are the ear pads replaceable? Are they still going to be comfortable through a long session? What’s the impedance?

Those questions matter. But for recording, mixing, mastering, and critical listening, the most important question is simpler: What do they actually let you hear?

If they exaggerate the bass, hide a harsh upper-midrange, blur transients, or mask quiet details, you’ll base your decisions on that flawed picture. A mix that sounds balanced in your cans will sound thin, muddy, or aggressive everywhere else.

This article gives you the tools you need to hear, understand, and compare how different headphones perform. You’ll know what to look for and what to listen for. You’ll also find links to a fantastic resource loaded with optimized audio files for testing these very topics.

Note:

No two people hear exactly alike. Ear shape, pad seal, age-related changes, previous noise exposure, and hearing loss can all affect what reaches your brain. Therefore, nothing in this article is a substitute for a professional hearing evaluation.

Frequency range

Frequency range describes the range of frequencies headphones can reproduce. Human hearing is mostly described as from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz. A lot of quality headphones cover that range, and some, like the Sennheiser HD 490 PROs, go well beyond it.

To test frequency range extension, play a low-frequency sweep and listen for the lowest frequency where you can start to hear the signal. Then use a descending high-frequency sweep and find the highest frequency you can hear.

While your results might not line up with the headphones’ published range, they’ll tell you what frequency extension you experience with those headphones. And that’s what’s important.

Frequency response

Frequency range tells you how far the headphones’ lows and highs extend. Frequency response tells you how evenly they do it.

For audio work, the theoretical goal is a perfectly flat, balanced presentation that doesn’t make any frequencies disproportionately louder or quieter. That said, there’s no such thing as a perfectly flat-sounding set of headphones.

Everything from the shape of your ear and head, ear-cup geometry, and the ear-pad seal influences that sound. And your hearing isn’t perfectly flat, either.

Because of that, this spectral flatness is difficult to listen for in isolation. Without a specialized test, it takes a lot of experience and a great set of ears. But it is something you’ll notice more clearly as you audition multiple sets of headphones.

But if you’re getting deep with this stuff, we recommend trying Dr. Stéphane Pigeon’s perceptually compensated sweep. You’ll be able to hear areas in your headphones’ performance that suddenly jump forward, disappear, or change character.

We go to incredible lengths designing some of the most accurate studio headphones you can buy. But the practical goal is personal. It’s about finding a set of headphones that sound tonally even to you.

So, throw on a pair of HD 480 PROs and run the test. You’ll understand what makes them so special. Then try the 280 PROs. Who knows? You may find they’re perfect for what you do.

Finding the right amount of isolation

Isolation isn’t about the sound reproduced by your headphones. It’s about the sound that leaks in and out of them. But isolation isn’t always a bad thing! It’s just that finding the right balance depends on the job you’re doing.

Open-back headphones, for example, intentionally allow sound to pass through the earcups. In a quiet environment, that’s key to their spacious, natural sonic presentation. It’s why so many professionals rely on them for their most detailed work.

The trade-off is that there’s little protection from outside noise, making them less desirable for working in noisy environments. And anything you can hear in the earcups will make its way onto any live mic in the room.

Closed-back headphones, like the HD 300 PROs, on the other hand, keep their sound isolated from the outside. That makes them better suited to tracking, location work, broadcast, live production, and rooms where outside noise would mask details. They’re also ideal for tracking around loud instruments and keeping the vocalist’s click track from bleeding into microphones.

Their potential drawback is that some struggle to reproduce the natural-sounding sonic picture of open-back designs.

Assessing a set of headphones' isolation is crucial when finding the right pair for you. However, we have to say it again: What to listen for is totally up to your requirements.

So, be sure to check them out at your normal working level while introducing realistic background noise. Can you still hear low-level detail without raising the volume? Now keep the audio playing, take them off, and listen. Can you hear the audio leaking out clearly?

Detail is in the dynamic range

Dynamic range (which is directly tied to isolation) is the difference between the loudest and quietest sounds (above the noise floor) you can hear cleanly without riding your volume.

In practice, it’s not about how loud or quiet headphones can get. It’s about asking, “In my working environment, can an aggressive snare hit hard while I can still hear room decay, breath, pick noise, or reverb tails without raising the volume?

Good headphones should preserve those contrasts. You shouldn’t need painful and dangerous volume to uncover quiet details, and louder passages shouldn’t collapse.

This one’s a little harder to test because of the external influence of your listening space and the different standards for closed- and open-back headphones. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good idea of your headphones’ dynamic range. Just click here.

Never increase the level beyond what’s safe!

Construction noise and driver problems

It’s easy to become absorbed in techy topics like frequency sweeps, isolation, and low-end extension. But you can’t forget one basic question: Are the headphones functioning properly?

Play bass-rich music or a low-frequency test at a comfortably loud level. Listen for rattling, buzzing, clicking, or mechanical noises that aren’t part of the source. These can indicate a loose component, a damaged driver, or even worn ear pads.

Also, be sure to move the cable around. Are you hearing excessive thumping, scraping, or rumble? Some of this is unavoidable, but it shouldn’t constantly distract you.

Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)

All electromagnetic transducers (headphone speakers, in this case) introduce some harmonic distortion into the signal. Their drivers can’t perfectly follow an input waveform, so they add small amounts of “energy” that isn’t in the original audio.

Measured as Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), the effect doesn’t always sound like clipping or fuzz. A lot of times it just sounds like an added tone, thickness, roughness, or a lack of definition.

In most quality headphones, THD is difficult or impossible to hear during normal listening. Published THD figures provide great context, but to experience THD’s effects on your audio, you must compare headphones using the same frequency, level, and measurement conditions.

That’s why, when putting different headphones through their paces, it’s a good idea to listen for this distortion with a clean low-frequency sine wave. It offers the most audible differences between an unaffected signal and your headphones’ limits.

A great resource to train your ears

A lot of this makes sense in theory, but it takes years of ear training to hear without context. We absolutely recommend Dr. Stéphane Pigeon’s Ultimate Headphones Test on AudioCheck.net. He covers all of this and more in technical detail while providing these extremely helpful audio tests for each.

Oh, and according to the article, he uses Sennheiser HD 600s. Nice.

Our advice is to run the tests with headphones you already know before trying unfamiliar pairs. Not only will you get a great feel for how each of these considerations reveals itself sonically, but you’ll also have a clear picture of what to listen for so that your work will translate.

Remember, specifications are important in narrowing your options. Features will determine whether headphones fit your workflow. But only experiencing them yourself can tell if a set of headphones is right for you.