I’ve been using high definition headphones for about three years now, and I’ve been very happy with them. However, due to a problem, these headphones died, and it wasn’t until I was forced to use more “average” headphones all the time that I realized I had become an audiophile. , either an audio connoisseur, or do all “standard PC” headsets sound bad to me?
Hi-Res headphones, why?
Really, for nothing in particular… as you know, on this site, we analyze many products first-hand to tell you how they work and give you our impressions, and some TOP headphones fell into my hands ago a few years: some Privateer Virtuoso SEheadphones designed for the commercial market (i.e. they are not professional headphones that need a preamp, far from it, it is a product within everyone’s reach) but they have much higher than normal specifications: they work with a frequency response from 20 to 40,000 Hz
Ever since they fell into my hands, I’ve been thrilled with the sound quality, and later ended up buying some for my personal use. As I said, for about three years I’ve been using them daily and for everything: conferences or listening to music, playing games and communicating with my colleagues on Discord; Also, they have the advantage of working wirelessly on the PS4, so I also used them to play with the console in the living room. Long story short, it’s been three years of daily use in which I’ve really given them a lot of “cane”.
But all devices have a lifespan, and honestly they lasted a long time for the use I gave them. The fact is that they broke down and I had to use other more standard headphones (I’m not going to say the model so as not to set a precedent), with the usual frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 KHz and with a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz in 16 bits, headphones that are really excellent in terms of quality and comfort and that sound very good, they don’t really have any drawbacks… but after three years with Hi-Res headphones, the sound was mediocre for me, insufficient…
In the end, I had to make another decision: I’m going to buy Hi-Res headphones again… I don’t know if another Virtuoso SE or maybe I’ll venture with another model, but what is clear to me is that after spending three years with them now the standards seem insufficient, at least for my “requirements” in terms of sound quality. And that’s why I’m writing this article, to warn you: be careful if you try Hi-Res headphones, because maybe later I don’t want to go back to normal.
Is it just a personal perception or are they technically superior?
The answer to this question is simple: they are technically superior, and we’ve told you this before…standard headphones are usually what’s called “CD quality”, while Hi-Res headphones have a higher rate. much higher sampling. , which means they are able to process and produce a lot more sounds at the same time, resulting in a much more nuanced sound.
But of course the “quality” of the sound they are able to process is not everything, it is also important to take into account the frequency response, which is nothing more than the frequency range that the headphones is able to transmit. As we said before, the most normal is 20Hz to 20KHz, a range which is great because that is exactly what the average human ear is capable of perceiving…but not everyone has not the same levels of hearing, and it can vary quite a bit.
For this reason, Hi-Res headphones are also technically superior in the frequency range they are capable of outputting, and as in the case of the example we gave you earlier, they typically reach 40,000 Hz ( the number of 32,000 Hz, even in the bass some offer from 10 Hz instead of the normal 20 Hz).
Therefore, as we have explained, Hi-Res headphones do not sound better in terms of each user’s perception, but technically they are much better and even without being an audiophile you can tell the difference.
