My storyKris, Springloft StudioStill breathing
It started in a toilet
The entire channel started in a toilet. My first video opens with me on a phone call, too embarrassed to use my shiny new earbuds because their mics were trash. Then the toilet flushes. Embarrassing. Don't make me explain the ending either: watch it yourself.
Can you hear the actual words?
As far as I know, that was the first video anywhere to take wireless headphone mics seriously. Now everyone does mic tests, on headphones, earbuds and anything that joins a video call. A majestic contribution to humanity, from a toilet.
A mic test is not a dating show. I don't care how sexy a voice sounds. I care whether the words get through, crisp and clear.
Sony headphone mics and I never really got along, then or now. No hard feelings, though: the TV I love most is a Sony. Not Samsung, not LG.
My ears handed in their notice
I finished cancer treatment in August 2019 and was back on my feet by October. My hearing was blocked for a few months. I believe it came back fully, but my tests now stop at about 12 to 15 kHz. That's my headphone-reviewing career politely leaving the room. I tested way more than the 17 models on the channel; the rest stay unpublished, because I won't review with downgraded ears.
Then in March 2021 a surgery took half my neck, plus a bunch of nerves and a major blood vessel between my heart and my brain. Patch notes:
- New voice. My left vocal cord is paralyzed, luckily stuck in the closed position, so I can still make noise.
- A quarter of my lower left head, from shoulder to ear to chin, is on airplane mode.
- My left arm got nerfed too, so fighting like Brad Pitt in Mr. & Mrs. Smith is off the table.
- Singing: lost some bass, some top treble, probably a whole top octave.
- Half the blood flow to my brain, so I'm running on half the normal IQ, memory and CPU. Please allow extra loading time.
Still breathing. Still listening.
Music stays. It's part of my life, and the only thing that would stop me listening is depression. So far the playlist is winning.
No new videos are planned. I'm just keeping this site going, so everything from 2018 to 2020 stays easy to find, sorted by headphone, so you can hear before you buy.
How the demos are made
I record with binaural microphones in dummy ears. Yes, fake ears. They have a job, and they're better at it than me now.
The mics' frequency profiles are calibrated and neutralized in production. So on any neutral headphones you hear the tested headphone as if you were wearing it, without your own headphones piling extra flavor on top. Watch in 1080p.
Those much-trashed Apple earphones? They're more realistic for judging sound signatures than any basshead headphones. Extra bass is seasoning nobody ordered.
How a noise-cancelling headphone fits together
My own "speculated and simplified" diagram. As it says, it's not the real design of any manufacturer's headphone, just my best guess.
In the diagram, sound arrives through Bluetooth or USB, is decoded by the codec (SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD or LDAC), then passes through digital effects and volume control, then noise cancelling, and a DAC turns it back into the analog signal the drivers play.
The noise-cancelling microphones feed the ANC stage through their own analog-to-digital converter. Buttons and the Bluetooth LE phone app adjust the effects and noise cancelling. A wired 3.5 mm signal can either be digitized and processed like the rest, or bypass everything and go straight to the drivers, which is the headphone's native, passive sound.
Of course, there are always newer protocols and standards. My half-IQ brain can't keep up anymore.