Extensive studies have been made into achieving generally enjoyable sound colour in headphone listening, but few publications have been written focusing on the demanding requirements of a single audio professional, and what they actually hear.
However, headphones provide fundamentally different listening conditions, compared to our professional, in-room monitoring standards. With headphones, there is even no direct connection between measured frequency response and what a given user hears.
Media professionals from a variety of fields need awareness of such differences, and to take them into account in content production and quality control.
The paper details a recently published method and systematic steps to get to know yourself as a headphone listener. It also summarises new studies of basic listening requirements in headphone monitoring; and it explains why, even if the consumer is listening on headphones, in-room monitoring is generally the better and more relevant common denominator to base production on. The following topics and dimensions are compared across in-room and headphone monitoring: Audio format, listening level, frequency response, auditory envelopment, localisation, speech intelligibility and low frequency sensation.
New, universal headphone monitoring standards are required, before such devices may be used with a reliability and a confidence comparable to in-room monitoring adhering to, for example, ITU-R BS.1116, BS.775 and BS.2051.
