Headphones

By eschewing earpads, the Mysphere 'Hover Ear' design removes a volume of air next to the ear in which reflections and resonances can occur. That's the upside. The downside is that, deprived of a pressure chamber, the headphone has to work much harder to generate bass. In a conventional headphone with earpads, at low frequencies – where the dimensions of the enclosed air volume are small relative to wavelength – a given diaphragm displacement will give rise to constant sound pressure level regardless of frequency. This is one reason why the best headphones generate lower distortion at bass frequencies than most loudspeakers, where diaphragm excursion has to quadruple with each halving of frequency in order to achieve a constant SPL (ie, a flat frequency response). Without a pressure chamber to work into, the Mysphere capsule operates more like a loudspeaker and its driver requires greater excursion capability as a result (4mm is specified). The lab report shows the consequences of this: bass extension is restricted and low-frequency distortion is higher than with the best conventional, sealed-to-the-skull headphones.