Communication Devices in The 21st Century

Selecting The Right Headphones - A Quick Overview For Novices.

Are you overwhelmed by the flood of regular and wireless headphones? You never heard of the terms open and closed headphones or dynamic and static transducers? This overview will help you select the perfect model.

There are many different designs and styles of headphones on the market starting with in-ear headphones as being the smallest headphones, some of which have a bracket that is worn around the ear. In-ear headphones often come with iPods or MP3 players. They are light-weight. Also, they easily can be stored in your pocket. Another type of headphones which are larger than in-ear headphones sit on the ear and have an elastic frame which either sits on the head or wraps around the neck. If you are on a tight budget then you should consider one of these headphones, some models are designed to absorb external noise.

Medium-end headphones are an option if you are able to spend a little more and offer better sound quality. The earpieces have ear cushions to improve the wearing comfort. These ear cushions are either located on your ear or around your ear. The second design eliminates the pressure on the ears and is preferred by many people. If you feel you would like to go with this type of headphones, you will then need to decide whether to go with an open, semi-open or closed design. An open design means that the audio can penetrate from the transducer to the outside and also cross-couple into the other earpiece. An open design is perceived by some people to have a light sound quality. A closed design will prevent the audio from disturbing bystanders. A closed design also helps block out exterior noise.

Today’s headphones are dynamic headphones for the most part. Dynamic indicates what type of transducer is used. Static headphones are the second type. This type is fairly expensive but offers high sound quality. Static headphones need a special headphone amplifier.

Wireless headphones are another option which eliminate the headphone cord. Bluetooth headphones are one type of wireless headphones and work with Bluetooth-enabled devices and cell phones. The range of Bluetooth headphones is typically less than 30 ft and the sound quality does not rival the quality of corded headphones.

Other wireless headphones include inexpensive 900 MHz models which use FM transmission and more advanced digital wireless headphones which work at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. In addition to noticeable hissing and distortion, FM type wireless headphones are also very susceptible to wireless interference.

Another type of wireless headphones are digital wireless headphones. This type of headphones, such as Amphony headphones, will encode the audio prior to transmission which prevents any audio distortion during the transmission and ensures high reliability against interference. Models which use the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band offer the lowest amount of problems with radio-frequency interference from competing devices.

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