11 Of The Best Tracks To Test Your Headphones

Get your ears around these can-tastic test tracks

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You’ll likely use headphones more than any other piece of hi-fi equipment. At any one time in the What Hi-Fi? office, at least half of us are using them (and not exclusively due to our questionable personalities).

We are well aware there is personal preference in what you want from your headphones – even we aren’t precious enough about hi-fi to assume the success of companies such as Beats is reliant only on good marketing. But by and large, there is no reason you ought to expect a radically different level of performance to that of your amplifier and speakers.

You may already have your own playlist to test equipment before you buy it – if not, it’s a worthwhile exercise – but here we put together a collection of tracks that will highlight what we believe to be the most important aspects of your headphones’ performance.

TO TEST OVERALL BALANCE

Explosions In The Sky

Wilderness

Balance isn’t always an easy one for headphone manufacturers to get right. Quite often we find them overloading the bottom end in an overzealous attempt to keep their product from sounding lightweight, or rolling off the treble to avoid any sharpness nearer the top of the frequency range.

In order to test the overall balance, you want a track that covers as much of the frequency range as possible. You get that from a lot of orchestral works, but more contemporary pieces, such as this from Explosions In The Sky, work too. There is plenty of low-end heft in Wilderness’s percussive pulse, while some of those guitar harmonics will reach high into the treble frequencies. Prefer something jazzier? We can’t recommend Black Country, New Road’s