Of Headphones To Come

I figured it was coming, but it wasn’t until just after I’d returned from the Audio Engineering Society’s 2016 International Conference on Headphone Technology1— held last August in Aalborg, Denmark—and was writing up my report and summary on the event for InnerFidel ity.com2 that I knew for sure: Headphones are about to change . . . a lot.

- Tyll Hertsens

I’d like to take you on a little ride into the future of headphones, but first we’ll have to go back to the past, for some context. Until 1970 or so, headphones were mostly used in professional recording studios, audiology labs, broadcast studios, and the like. Consumers didn’t use them much. Stax’s first electrostatic ear speakers appeared in 1960, and slowly gathered a few fans among audiophiles, but that market niche was very small. In 1970, when Koss introduced the Pro4AA dynamic headphones, a few consumers began to take notice. I was one of them. With my paperroute money, I bought a pair of Pro4AAs in 1972, so I could listen to Pink Floyd at night as my little brother slept in the bunk above.

Then, in 1979, with the introduction of the Sony Walkman, consumers for the first time began using headphones in large numbers. Of course, their attention was mostly on the Walkman itself—headphones were mere accessories to that device. It would take something much bigger for headphones to become a viable product in the minds of most consumers.

By 1990, little had changed—headphones remained hung on the accessories rack, next to the cables and adapters. But headphones did begin to appear in high-end audio. In Stereophile, Corey Greenberg fawned over Grado’s nifty SR60 model ($69),3 and Stax’s pricey electrostatic headphones sold reasonably well among serious audiophiles who needed to keep the noise level down at night.4