My friend...

[Possédé]

I have known Ewan for 8 and a half years. His dad has some great audio equipment and Ewan has a great gaming set-up. Anyway... On two occasions, when we were talking about earphones he stated that: "Earphones/headphones do not produce bass, it's just a large amount of volume that makes it sound like bass". Being me I knodded my head and told him I would put it up here and let him see what kind of replies I get. I want to know what you think. :p

[solvexyz]

well, your friend definitely refering to that earphones/headphones can not produce the kinda earthshaking feel of the bass coming from a home theater subwoofer. This is true. A earphone/headphones can never accomplish this.

However, earphones/headphones can produce the kind of sound when you hear from a subwoofer. Just that there is no that boom boom..... feeling.

[misper666]

innit all to do with cavity size & vents, ie when ur moving a diaphragm it creates differences in air pressure on both sides, so depending on what they are trying to do, some will have more holes on the back than others and slightly larger space inside for dealing with bass? i know that for example my headphones are like pressing my ears against speakers, i can feel them vibrating (not distorting) so the internal gubbins are moving freely but they also sound just as loud on the outside, whereas my canal type phones dont need to produce heaps of bass (cos theyre down my ears), have hardly any vents on the outside, so letting me hear mid-top ranges better.

however, it cant just be basic physics, its alot to do with qualty design too

[Buzzbait]

Ewan, for the most part, is correct. The lower end of the audible frequency range, known as bass, is very hard to reproduce through a pair of headphones. You will get some bass, but the volume of those bass frequencies will be much lower than other frequencies. So in essence, you’ll barely hear the lower bass.

Fortunately, modern rock music doesn’t have much lower bass to speak of. It’s mostly upper bass range, and a ton of harmonics at even higher frequencies. The headphone/bass issue is much more apparent if you listen to classical music, especially organ music. Many movie soundtracks also sound like doo-doo through headphones.

[bdb]

I was at a Police concert many years back, and they had a bass organ that prduced a sound that litterally buffeted the listener. It was a set of foot pedals so Sting could playing it while he was playing bass guitar. He'd just hit it and hold it for several seconds, a few times during the concert. I looked down and saw my clothes vibrating! Earphones certainly couldn't do that!

Obviously earphones can't produce anything body-shaking...not sure how necessary that is for music, though. :)