Audio Engineering: Know It All

Chapter 25. Headphones

Not all sound reaches us through loudspeakers, and the advent of the Sony Walkman has led many listeners back to headphone stereo. In this chapter, Ian Sinclair shows the very different type of problems and their solutions as applied to this alternative form of listening.

25.1. A Brief History

The history of modern headphones can be traced back to the distant first days of the telephone and telegraph. Then, headphone transducers for both telephone and radio worked on the same moving-iron principle—a crude technique compared to today’s sophistication, but one which served so well that they are still to be found in modern telephone receivers.

Moving-iron headphones suffered from a severely restricted frequency response ...