Understanding your Audio Gear- Part 2: Sound Spectrum
One of the key aspect of any headphone before you take the plunge to buy is to get a sense of how the headphone sounds. Now considering that describing the sound is highly subjective. However, if you spend some time searching online, you will come across the chart whats termed as Frequency chart for headphone as you can see above.
Looking at the chart, you may decide that let me just ask someone how the headphone sounds but bear with me for a while and you will soon be able to infer how to decide what sounds best for you.
Every sound that you hear in your music is simply a sound vibration at a specific frequency. The thump that you feel from the bass or singers vocals or the various music instruments that you hear are just sounds at different frequencies that we measure in Hertz (Hz).
Hence the frequency chart for a headphone shows how the headphone reproduces sounds across different frequency, giving you a idea on how it will sound. Reading the chart will help you see if the gear got the extra bass that you enjoy.
So lets break up the sound into its bits to understand how the frequency number relates back to the sound that you hear
Sub Bass (Less than 60Hz)
This is the powerful rumbling that you feel when you listen to a music. Its something we all would have felt it in a movie theatre. The sound best felt with aid of a sub-woofer in a speaker system.
This part of sound gives you the impact that you feel. However, if its overproduced, you feel that sound lacks clarity as it starts to sound muddy
Bass (60 Hz — 250 Hz)
This is part of the sound that provides rhythm to your song from instruments such as Kick Drum ( large drum part kicked by the drummer), bass guitar. This sound provides the beat to the song and boosting it gives you the boomy feel that makes you a more live music feel
Midrange (250 Hz — 2,000 Hz)
Part of the sound that provides clarity to the song, vocals and most key instruments. This part of the frequency is whose clarity gives you a great listening experience to the music and hearing the vocals. This part of the sound gives one a feel of the whole song. The key part for any gear is to produce sound well in this range else you detest using the gear .Most gear provide a good boost in this region as it tends to make appreciate the sound
Upper midrange (2,000 Hz — 6,000 Hz)
The part of the sound that provides a essence on tone quality. In more simpler terms, if you find vocals of a person better than other, its primarily driven by this part of music. This is part of the frequency that lets you understand the type of instruments used such a Acoustic or Electric guitar, style of production such as studio or live. What one perceives as good or bad quality is due to this part of the sound
High frequencies (6,000 Hz — 20,000 Hz)
The part of the sound where you find the shrilling noise. Most people are unable to hear beyond 17Khz as ones ears loses capacity for higher frequency as we age. This part of the sound gives you feel the sound is more open. However, if not done well, you also tend to feel tired listening as its taxing on the ears
Now lets try to understand the chart for OnePlus Bullets Wireless
We have a flat line at Zero and in ideal case, the curve should be flat but then flat line doesn't work best as it needs to be tuned to make it enjoyable for us to hear.
A “natural sounding” headphone is slightly higher in the bass (about 3 or 4 dB) between 40Hz and 500Hz to compensate that headphones can’t give you ‘impact’ of a typical
Headphones are rolled-off in the highs as the drivers being so close to the ear; a gently sloping flat line from 1kHz to about 8–10dB down at 20kHz is about right. You will find some small peaks in middle as headphones may try to add some sound in specific frequency to deliver the sound signature
Now in the case of One Plus You can clearly see the typical boost in the bass segment but midrange falls off faster much before reaching 1Khz. Hence this earphone bass will sound louder as mid range falls off faster than for a flat reference headphone.
I hope next time you lay your eyes on such a chart, you are able to infer more info when looking for a good headphone
