Beginner's Guide

Understanding different sound signatures for your Headphones and Earphones

If you're someone who's browsing our incredible collection of headphones and in-ear monitors on our website, one of the things that you'll see us talking a lot about to describe each of these headphones is its sound signature. The sound signature for headphones is telling you a little about how these headphones are supposed to present your music to you when you put them on and how they're tuned to be able to play all the different parts of the music together. A sound signature is perhaps the best way to describe what you should expect to listen to when you put these headphones on. In this video, I'm going to help you try and understand these different sound signatures that we have and hopefully pick the right one for you.

Intro 

Hi guys this is Raghav here from headphone Zone. If you're someone who'sbrowsing our incredible collection of headphones and in-ear monitors on ourwebsite one of the things that you'll see us talking a lot about to describe eachof these headphones is its sound signature. The sound signature forheadphone is really telling you a little bit about how these headphones aresupposed to present your music to you when you put them on and how they'retuned to be able to play all the different parts of the music together. A soundsignature is perhaps the best way to describe what you should expect to listento when you put these headphones on. In this video I'm going to help you tryand understand these different sound signatures that we have and hopefullypick the right one for you. 

Understanding different sound signatures

First things first, I'm sure when we all started off in our childhood we must haveplayed around with the equaliser on an old radio system or on a car audiosystem. You have the bass and the treble and you would have turned theseknobs up and down to listen to what difference they made to the way that yourmusic is playing. Perhaps the easiest thing to understand is the bass, you turnup the bass and all the low frequencies, the energy and the thump getsexaggerated, gets turned up and the bass dial is the easiest way to turn up aparty. You know that the kick drum, the bass guitar, all of these are instrumentsthat are featured in the low frequencies or the bass, it's really what makesmusic sound fun and energetic. When we're listening to music on a laptopspeaker or a mobile phone speaker you'll find that there's virtually no bassbecause these are really really tiny speakers and they're punching out a largevolume of air but for the bass to be there it's got to be a much larger speaker tobe able to give you that low frequency and therefore for a lot of us good sound is simply equivalent to a lot of bass and if you are someone who's looking tohave a party and you're looking for that kind of a sound signature when you puta headphone on there are a whole bunch of brands and headphones thatmarket themselves as an extra bass sound signature. It's really coming from aschool of thought where people think that extra bass is good sound but thatcouldn't be further from the truth. When you're listening to good soundingheadphones, a lot of bass can basically muddle out and overpower the rest ofthe frequencies. You'll find that music will no longer sound believable andauthentic or very well balanced when the bass is overpowering everything else.So with time you'll find that a more balanced sound signature which is the kindof sound signature that all high end headphones and speakers tend to have. Itis where all the frequencies not just the bass is presented equally. You'll findthat the mid-range which is typically where your vocals instruments like thepiano and guitars, trumpets and violins are there and the highs which is thetreble frequencies where you have a lot of sharp, shrill instruments,percussions, cymbals that basically add the excitement, the drama on top ofthe music and the bass are all presented equally importantly. The instrumentsare clearly distinct and a balanced sound signature everything sounds muchmore believable much more as the artist intended. When you put theseheadphones on and hit play sometimes the sharp frequencies the higherfrequencies that we call as treble can also add a lot of excitement and drama tothe music. You would have experienced this when you take the treble knob onyour car audio system and turn it up to max. These are the sharp, shrillfrequencies that can sound really really exciting and fun but over long periodsof time it also sometimes causes fatigue. It can sound a little too shrill, a littletoo sharp. In the right amount it can sound airy, it can sound shining, it cansound exciting, so there are a whole bunch of headphones whose soundsignature can be sometimes described as bright. If they pay a lot of emphasison the treble frequencies and some people like that a lot and a lot of people willfind that very fatiguing or very tiring. It can sound like pins in your ears if you'relistening to music for long hours at a time. So what some people like to do is tojust turn down that treble just a little bit and that kind of smoothens out thetreble and headphones that tend to do that can be described as warm andsmooth. That's the kind of sound signature that you want to go for if you want alittle bit of bass but you also want that treble toned down a little bit so that itdoesn't kind of make it harsh and tiring and fatiguing to listen to. Lastly I wantto talk to you about what we call a flat sound signature. This is not verydifferent from a balanced sound signature but if you're someone who's using aheadphone in the studio for recording music or for a professional purposewhere you're editing the soundtrack of a movie or a video then you want aheadphone that's really a great tool for you to be able to make changes to yourrecording while mixing and mastering. The headphone is really your referenceand for this you want the headphone to be able to play all the frequencieswithout exaggerating or diminishing any part of the sound spectrum. Theseheadphones we typically call as flat, it's because they represent all thefrequencies perfectly neutrally. If you're someone who's looking for just the right amount of balance between the bass and the treble which you also wantto turn it up a little bit to add a little bit more punch to the low end and a littlebit more excitement to the high end, we can describe this kind of a soundsignature as a v-shaped sound signature. It's where you have just that littlemore emphasis on the lows and the highs in virtually equal proportion and themid-range can sometimes be a little recessed but this is the most exciting andfun kind of sounding sound signature that a lot of audiophile really crave and gofor. On the other hand a flat sound signature is not very different from abalanced sound signature but is really the kind of sound signature that doesn'temphasise or exaggerate any frequency throughout the entire spectrum andthis is really really important for people who are using headphones in the studiofor a professional application like editing of sound or recording or for recordingmusic and you'll find that the headphones are a tool. It's a reference for you toknow what your music should sound like and a flat sound signature is exactlythe kind of sound signature you want to go for for use for that application. 

Outro

 so with this video I think now you should be able to understand all the differentsound signatures that we talk about on our website you have an extra basssound signature you have a warm and smooth sound signature you have abalanced sound signature you have a bright sound signature and a v-shapedsound signature while also looking at a flat sound signature so that's a coupleof different and hopefully you've understood the right one for you.