Music through headphones or music over speakers. Which do you think you would prefer to dance to? In this article Julian reflects on the results of some research which might surprise you.
I’d like to know whether in 2021 we have reached the point where more music is played over headphones than over speakers. I’m sure the data exists somewhere, I just haven’t yet found it but I’ll keep looking as I suspect that we have already passed the tipping point.
Listening over loudspeakers is fundamentally different from headphones. We’ve covered the difference before, for example this article Not Many Audio Professionals Know This Fact About Mixing On Headphones describes the effects of crosstalk, Haas delays and head masking. But there is something more fundamental which isn’t discussed In that article - the perception of bass.
When listening to music loud, over speakers the effects of bass are unmistakably physical. The thump in the chest of a kick drum at volume, the unsettling, exciting sensation we all get from loud sub bass. These effects are physiological, triggering anything from grins of excitement to, in extreme cases, nausea.
Headphones don’t do that. While the engineer in you might appreciate how completely the standing waves in your room have been bypassed by listening on your studio headphones, the bass is moving your eardrums, but not your body.
It was when I first saw an advert for a pair of wireless headphones, possibly in the late 90s, that I conceptually invented the silent disco. Unfortunately someone had got there before me and I just hadn’t heard about it. It was years later that I first experienced a silent disco. What works in theory sometimes doesn’t work in practice and in this case it was the isolation of wearing headphones which made it so unsuccessful to me. However people were dancing, and with great enthusiasm.
Headphones or Speakers?
This is borne out by the findings of this study from the PMC, in this case standing for PubMed Central rather than the Professional Monitor Company (or even Pulse Code Modulation). This PMC is an archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine and it was there I came across a study titled Headphones or Speakers? An Exploratory Study of Their Effects on Spontaneous Body Movement to Rhythmic Music.
In this study 35 participants listening to “rhythmic stimuli” including but not restricted to music (If you never saw ravers dancing to car alarms you missed the 90s…) and recorded the incidence of “spontaneous movement”. However amusing the rigorous language might be, what this study was doing was investigating whether or not people dance more to music over headphones or speakers. The really interesting this was that In spite of my assumptions, people dance, sorry, exhibit “spontaneous movement” more to music over headphones than music over speakers.
Does this mean that my belief that music over headphones can’t be as emotionally involving as music played over good speakers is wrong? Well maybe I just raised an important question because while the methodology and the presentation of the data seems impeccable. Was the gear up to scratch?
What Gear Was Used?
The audio was played from Reaper via an RME interface to a pair of Beyerdynamic DT 770s (80 Ohms if you were wondering) and the speakers were Genelec 8020s with a 7050 subwoofer. So no issues with the quality of the gear or the bass extension of the speaker system. However something which did strike me was the playback level. 72dB for the speakers and 74dB (presumably dB SPL though this wasn’t specified and neither was any weighting applied) for the headphones. The difference was justified in terms of prior research and was introduced to compensate for the lack of crosstalk in the case of headphones. Playing back Sado by Pysh, one of the tracks used, over my Genelec monitors at 72dB, as measured by my GLM kit, I found 72dB to be too quiet. My preferred level being closer to 80dB.
Too Quiet?
So if there is a potential flaw in this research it is that people don’t feel the urge to dance to quiet music over speakers. However if people dance to the bassline (and as a bass player I can confirm that they do) then the bass needs to flap the trousers at least a little.
Regardless of that it’s interesting research. With headphone use growing in every area of audio and with immersive formats like Dolby Atmos and Ambisonics making binaural mixes increasingly relevant, if people are moved by headphones like they are moved by speakers then, considering their convenience and accessibility, it makes us wonder whether for many people speakers are becoming unnecessary?