Hope everybody is doing well. My name is Andrea, I am a student of Politecnico di Milano and am carrying out research about headphones and the experience of using them. For this, I am collecting opinions through a short survey. I would greatly appreciate if anyone has the time to fill it out, it will take around 5 minutes and it will hopefully result in better services being offered in the future
The information collected from this survey will remain anonymous and will be used solely for educational purposes for my Master’s project.
You have a question that I feel may be somewhat confusing for people: “how satisfied are you with the service (communication, repairs, support, community, etc.)?”
I say that this may be somewhat divisive as aftersales support may vary greatly depending on region and whether someone buys directly from manufacturers, licenced distributors, or almost entirely on the used market as I do. Moreover, the “community” aspect stands out because I feel there’s a distinct separation between hobbyist circles like this forum or others and official, manufacturer-endorsed/vetted channels. Also, having multiple manufacturers may skew results one way or the other; Sennheiser is grand for aftersales, Klipsch much less so IME.
@Lyer25 yes I see your point, will try to make that question clearer, indeed I care about the interaction with the manufacturer, not the seller. So a community made by the manufacturer themselves (if any).
@generic I also realized people own more than one pair of headphones! I am pretty new to the scene (Got my first pair a couple months ago) and through this research I’ve been learning A LOT about audio so making quite a few discoveries
I picked one pair of headphones that I own and filled it out specifically for that pair. If that’s your intention, then maybe add a line to the questionnaire to make it clear.
I got to the bottom of page 3/4 before I realised that you are not conducting a survey headphones and the experience of using them. You are conducting a survey of only wireless headphones with more advanced features common to headphones supporting Bluetooth - small (but growing) fraction of all headphones.
Some questions omit cases which make all required answers incorrect, e.g.
How satisfied are you with the service from the brand/manufacturer?
where none of the answers consider that most owners don’t seek or receive service from a manufacturer or anyone else.
The terms “manufacturer”, “brand”, “dealer”, “vendor” and such can be a bit confusing in markets such as headphones. The unclear use in some questions will compromise the validity of responses.
The last question is nonsensical:
Would you try or be interested in the service?
Yes
No
Maybe
Please explain your above answer.
PS. The headphones in the picture appear to be wired and therefore irrelevant to the questionnaire.
Hey @AJCxZ0, do you mind me asking, what makes the questions oriented to wireless/bluetooth only?
You guys are the experts so I’m only here to learn, I truly would like to know what you mean.
where none of the answers consider that most owners don’t seek or receive service from a manufacturer or anyone else.
Indeed that’s what I’m trying to gather. I want to learn what people think of it, even if they have not had the experience with the service and only with the product. They can still either give it a neutral score, a positive one because they don’t have any complaints or expectations or a lower score because they do.
The terms “manufacturer”, “brand”, “dealer”, “vendor” and such can be a bit confusing in markets such as headphones.
Mind helping me out with this one also? Vendor, retailer and dealer seem to refer to the entity doing the selling of the product. Brand to well, the brand, and manufacturer to the one who produces them. Does the brand sometimes differ from the manufacturer?
The last question is nonsensical:
How so?
Appreciate you taking the time to write all this up and giving some feedback. Just asking some follow up questions so that I can make some updates to the survey. Thanks, and thanks for everyone answering the questions
It may help to delimit your demographics— are you looking for responses from people who are audio gear enthusiasts (for whom sound quality is far more important than auxiliary features like wireless connectivity or surround sound gimmicks) or more from the general populace (for whom ultimate sound quality is less of a concern past a certain point than quality of life improvements).
Most audio fora like here, SBAF, or even Head-Fi tend to attract a certain kind of enthusiast that pursues “better sound” and is willing to pay a fair bit in the hunting. There is no one truly objective metric for that as far as many are concerned so many end up with answers unique to them, tempered solely by lifestyle and budget.
Yes, there are OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that make gear to the specifications of other companies for the sale of the latter. Sometimes these relationships are not disclosed (for example, Foster made the biocellulose drivers used in Apple EarPods a while back, and they also make the diaphragms used in many headphones from E-Mu, Denon, Klipsch, and their own Fostex). That’s a popular example, but many similar relationships exist in the audio space because crafting parts well does look to be a remarkably tedious process, like how Bock, Schmidt, and JoWo make branded nibs for loads of other fountain pen manufacturers that may or may not openly advertise that relationship.
I went through the survey again just to look for what this may be hinting at, I do not see that there is any one question narrowing responses down to solely mass consumer-focused Bluetooth headphones other than allusions to features that aren’t commonly part of “enthusiast” gear like sound personalisation and the like. I can understand why there may be confusion though, it’ll happen regardless because such is the nature of online survey respondents
The drop-down list of brands suggests an orientation toward consumer and lately Bluetooth/wireless phones. I’m an “Other” user and I’d expect that many other people on this board are also.
In fact, I would like to ask about something specific you said Lyer25
[…] gear enthusiasts (for whom sound quality is far more important than auxiliary features like wireless connectivity or surround sound gimmicks)
Why do you consider surround sound as a gimmick?
I gotta say, I am quite surprised about the interest about some of the features. I’d love to hear everybody’s opinion on Sound Personalization and Context Awareness. What role do these play in the ultimate goal of getting the highest sound quality, if any?
Thanks to @Lyer25 for answering the questions well.
The list of brands in What brand of headphones do you use?, while not exclusive to wireless, is heavily slanted toward them. If the list was for headphones in general, then it would likely reflect the brands of headphones which are most commonly discussed here. It would also be more interesting since folks who buy ZMF are more likely to interact with the actual people who make and sell the headphone.
Besides hardware issues (eg: cable broken), have you had any other issues with your headphones (eg: headphone not pairing with phone)? clearly excludes every option which applies to headphones which are not wireless since they can only have hardware issues.
From this list, do you know or have you heard about any of these new features or technologies for headphones? is a list containing only features of wireless headphones and follow-up questions relate only to these.
Of course it’s possible to answer other questions as if they have a broader context (as I did), but these questions clearly narrow it since there is no qualifier for them.
It’s easy to give social science a hard time for their practitioners’ lack of rigor and precision, but the fact that respondents can give a variety of responses which are all false does not make the question appropriate.
When did you stop eating babies?
This week
Between two and six weeks ago
I still eat babies
It’s complicated and @Lyer25’s answer is not only good, but as a fellow fountain pen enthusiast, well written, too!
Since several questions relate to correspondence with another party, the questions don’t account for the fact that it is usual for multiple parties to be involved: first the vendor (who may be a dealer), then some representative of the brand (who many be the manufacturer), e.g. for warranty repairs. Sometimes there are all the same, such as with Monoprice, though they manufacture nothing.
Given the enjoyment I get from my 4.1.4 home theater, 7.1 bedroom theater, 6.1 office theater and 5.1 car theater, I’m biased to say surround sound is not a gimmick.
The question of the use of the term “surround sound” in the marketing of a very specifically target type of headphone and the actual technology used in such headphones is very interesting.
A headphone can have multiple drivers and a DAC which processes multi-channel audio, making it unambiguously “surround sound”. Any headphone can play a recording which is encoded to position sound: hear e.g. the Binaural Test on the excellent The Ultimate Headphones (and Earphones) Test site. There are multiple possibilities between these, such as those used in the Audeze Mobius.
That said, the experience of stereo imaging in a good headphone capable of a wide (enough) “soundstage” and “separation” playing a good recording rarely leaves the listener wishing for a “surround sound” technology to improve it. Most consumer headphones do not have good soundstage or separation.
They are orthogonal.
As with other areas of audio, the best results are usually obtained when the electronics and the acoustic devices are separately chosen, however as with recent powered bookshelf speakers and professional speakers such as Genelec, combining the two very well can produce extraordinary results including using DSP to optimise actual sound quality. One example is the Drop + THX Panda.
Both “Sound Personalization” and “Context Awareness” typically refer to features which are related to function rather than audio reproduction, but both are essentially features of electronics.
For example, my years-old $75 Radsone Earstudio ES100 tiny Bluetooth DAC/amp provides EQ and other DSP, enables mixing in environmental sounds, connects to my mobile device to provide LDAC encoded audio and provides a balanced output to which I can connect any of my headphones to give me both the best sound which my choice of headphones can produce combined with all the power, flexibility and options provided by digital electronics. I can gesture at my mobile device to control the audio.
Like how I prefer using fountain pens for both comfort and aesthetic reasons, I also have some stodgier tendencies when it comes to sound reproduction, haha. The fact that I am primarily a headphone user instead of someone who merely adapted headphones when using a large hi-fi setup is unfeasible (moving around, working out, neighbours and family, etc) seems to have made me a bit nitpickier about what I call “headstage”, or the presentation of music in a cohesive sensory soundscape that gives the illusion of artists being “there”.
Artificial “surround sound” implemented via DSP makes a lot of sense when used in scenarios like gaming, whether in VR or just on a regular 2D screen, where it’s important for the experiencer to be able to localise sound sources in a dynamic context where perspective is shifting rapidly for better immersion, but when it comes to pure music listening I just find it lacks the nuance you get with well-done stereo headphone audio even though it sounds a lot more immediately impressive— the field is massive, but the individual sonic elements always seem somewhat garbled.
It could be that I’m just more sensitive to and particular about headstage because I’ve had to grow used to it on account of my logistics; purr1n over at SBAF (another forum you could share the survey on, I suppose) for one says that all headphones stage horribly compared to speakers, and given I’ve had the luxury of hearing some nice speakers over the years I’m inclined to agree that even modest active bookshelf speakers throw out a much better stage than even the likes of the much-lauded Sennheiser HD800 or HiFiMAN HE1000V2 (never heard the V1) can manage; there’s just more sense of expansiveness, depth, layering, and existing “outside” of the transducers, whether between them, in front of them, behind, or a bit more off to the side.
And hey, we manage to localise sounds in our actual environments pretty well even though we only have two ears. The rest of our body plays a role in it too, but this is beyond my kenning so I’m going to refrain from commenting more lest I spread misinformation.
Haven’t gotten into more-than-2ch speaker audio that I can recall so no comment on that— maybe it’s grand! I was just speaking with regard to software that fakes headstage with headphones; sorry if that wasn’t clear.
As for these, Context Awareness makes sense for items that are designed to be worn in various settings, but I feel most people who pursue “better” sound have at least a dedicated listening space that renders such a thing superfluous. Neat for something you’d wear on a busy city street, maybe less so when the world’s relatively quiet and you’re sitting back in your favourite chair with a nice drink and snacks at hand.
The Sound Personalisation makes more sense to me, esp. for transducers that bypass physical structures like the ears . Also, I’m only 27 but have some high-frequency hearing loss that’s probably normal wear and tear but also more directly due to one stupid incident when I got blasted with painfully high volumes at a work event over a span of a couple hours. My hearing tops out around 17kHz or a bit under and I think my left ear has a slight notch at 10-11kHz when listening to sine sweeps— I think sound personalisation would be a grand feature given how there are a great many factors that could influence a person’s HRTF.
I’ve always been curious to hear the AKG N90Q and think it’d be grand if more companies released high-end headphones that compensate for the physiological differences between people. I still don’t much care for the Harman target either way.
