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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 October 2020

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With a few rare outliers excepted, there are two different types of earphone drivers: dynamic drivers and balanced armatures. Although great earphones have been made with either type of driver, and often contain both types, the two drivers are very different in form and performance. Most headphone enthusiasts understand the concept of dynamic drivers, which are basically just miniaturized versions of conventional speakers, but many do not understand how balanced armatures work, or what their advantages and disadvantages are.

Read more: Balanced Armatures: Why You Might (or Might Not) Want Them

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 September 2020

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I think I just heard the future of headphones -- and I wasn’t really even listening to headphones. Technically, the product I was listening to is a PSAP, or personal sound amplification product: the Nuheara IQbuds² Max, which I’m measuring for a technical publication along with some other PSAPs. The Nuheara IQbuds² Max earbuds ($399 USD) are basically a set of true wireless earbuds with features added for hearing enhancement. Like many audio products that have come before them, the IQbuds² Max earbuds seek to adapt their output to best suit the listener’s hearing characteristics. The difference is that this product actually seems to work.

Read more: The Coming Revolution in Headphone Sound Quality

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 August 2020

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My column last month, “The Biggest Lie in Audio,” sparked lots of commentary, but it also raised questions that are tough to answer. While most of the people commenting on the article here and elsewhere found it to be a welcome relief from what some have called the “faith based” approach of many audio publications, some weren’t so complimentary. A few derided science-oriented, “objectivist” writers as “narrow-minded” because they criticize audio products that don’t conform to generally accepted performance standards. Some insist that there’s no such thing as “accuracy” (they always put that word in quotes) in music reproduction, so audio writers have no basis on which to criticize outlier products.

Read more: Can Accuracy in Music Reproduction Exist?

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 July 2020

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You can’t get far into an audio forum or the comments sections of audio websites without encountering the statement “Some products that measure well sound bad, and some products that measure poorly sound good.” Depending on who said it, it’s at best uninformed and at worst a lie. And it’s a lie that sometimes sticks listeners with underperforming audio gear.

Read more: The Biggest Lie in Audio

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 June 2020

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A decade ago, there was little consensus on how headphones should sound. With different brands -- or even different models of the same brand -- headphone enthusiasts rarely knew what to expect because they had only vague ideas of what was “right.” It’s a different world now, though. Thanks to scientific research (such as that behind the Harman curve), wider publication of headphone measurements, and more interaction between engineers at events such as the AES International Conference on Headphone Technology, good headphones have become common, rather than rare exceptions.

Read more: Voicing Headphones, Part 2: HiFiMan’s Fang Bian and Focal’s Mégane Montabonel