I have been doing some work with cheap headphone earbuds for quite a while now. I was wondering, when buying earbuds in bulk, if there was any way to tell what the sound quality would be before purchasing. Obviously one would expect more expensive earbuds to be of higher quality, but there is always the chance that they are just a scam.
I've noticed there is an Ohm value for each headphone and some other metrics like speaker size that are listed within each earbud spec sheet, but I dont know which of these are more important for sound quality. Also, I've taken apart some more expensive earbuds and found that they have fluffy yellow stuff (magnetic shielding?) lining the wires that probably helps drown out noise. Lastly, I'm wondering if gold-tipped TRS/TRRS plugs would make a difference over silver or aluminum ones.
Really, I'm just looking to determine the general sound quality of bulk headphones before purchasing them so that I can make an educated compromise before purchasing them.
Best Answer
You can take a look at frequency response curves for a general sense of how neutral a pair of headphones is. If you're trying to do analytical work, you really don't want a heavily biased pair of headphone (very bass heavy or very poor bass response), however this still won't capture how much detail it is able to create in terms of maintaining accuracy of quiet bits while reproducing a louder portion.
The best bet is to try a pair. If you can't try a pair, reviews by people doing analytical tasks with them is your next best bet. Beyond that, it's a guessing game/deciding if you know the manufacturer well enough to trust how they are marketing it.