Headphones

One of the enduring mysteries of headphone design is why it has taken so long for someone to create a circumaural headphone whose capsules are (cry in wonder) ear-shaped. Headphones with circular or elliptical capsules abound, and some even have ovoid capsules which are vaguely ear-shaped but often spoil it by using elliptical earpad recesses within. Ultrasone has used the parallelogram [HFN Oct '16] while Sonus faber deployed what I refer to as 'the mitre' because the capsules for its Pryma model resemble a bishop's titfer [HFN Jun '16]. But until Dan Clark Audio (then MrSpeakers) introduced the original Aeon, no major headphone manufacturer I can think of had abandoned regular geometric forms for the obvious one: the shape of the ear itself. It's not as if the familiar alternatives are adequate – most headphones ruck or squash the pinnae in some way or other – nor is it the case that statistical dimensional information for a wide range of ear shapes is in short supply. In fact there's a quite a lot of literature on the subject, albeit of variable quality. Let me put it this way – you wouldn't wear square shoes, would you? KH