Hello friends. Dogentricks.com here. Today I’ll be telling you why you need to spend 500 dollars on a pair of headphones.

For those of you who don’t know what an audiophile is, allow me to explain in simple English. It’s really just a fancy name for someone that likes music. That is, someone who enjoys, and I mean really enjoys, sitting down and listening to an album. By the ratio of miracle to music articles I publish on this site, it should be no surprise that I love a catchy tune.

In fact, I can easily say music is the most important element of my life. Whether my iPod is on or off, there is always a beat echoing in the corners of my conscious. Tricking, training, train ride, study, you name it and the music is there. Music has the absolute unique ability of shaping mood. I can be as sour as a warhead, listen to 30 seconds of bonobos and be on cloud 9 in no time. I can be tired as a dying sloth, listen to 運命複雑骨折 and instantly be at 120% charge. I’m sure you all know the feeling.

Which is why I’d like to expand a bit – everyone is the same as me. Everyone has a band the LOVE, everyone has a song that gets their blood pumping, everyone has a song they just NEED to hear every now and then. Everyone loves getting lost in the music, whether they’re lying in bed, maxing out 225, or tearing up the club. That’s just how we are.

Nice. Now let’s move on to why you need a better set of cans.

As it is their job to create a euphoric harmony, musicians will often spend hundreds of hours in the studio, working endlessly to trace the rhythmic details manifested in their minds. Here’s what most of us don’t think about: professionals use professional equipment – 1K headphones driven by equally expensive amps. It’s necessary for musicians to use these instruments to ensure a precise transition from the measures in their head to the pulsating speakers.

When you use a pair of cheap headphones, you are losing a large majority of what the artist wanted you to hear.

Many people have trouble firmly grasping the audio quality dilemma so I’ve decided to use a visual analogy to clear things up. Imagine artist X creates a painting known as The Complexity. True to it’s name, The Complexity is a masterpiece full of intricacies. A 5′ by 5′ canvas covered in a cornucopia of color and passion. It goes without saying, but looking at The Complexity from 10 feet away with 15/20 vision just doesn’t do it justice. You’ll miss what the artist really wanted to express. You’ll miss why The Complexity is truly a masterpiece. You’ll miss the details. Artist X took over a year to create this painting – in order to truly appreciate The Complexity, you’ll need to see it in person. You’ll need to stand directly in front of it to truly soak up the details. And when you do that, the breath will be pulled from your lungs as beauty of true harmony is realized.

Listening to music with stock iPod headphones does not suffice. I’ll start by explaining the technical side of things. Almost all headphones under $100 have low quality single drivers, or speakers. This means in each headphone all of the sound will be displaced through a single source. I.e. the high notes of the climatic chorus and the low punch of the bass drum will be squeezed through a single, small passage. To compensate for the stress of two very polar opposite frequencies, the sound quality is lowered and transformed into a single wave. Sadness.

Nicer headphones will have high quality speakers, meaning though the sound is transformed into a single wave, it is still retains decent quality. The problem still lies within the funneling problem. To hear things as they were naturally recorded, it is necessary to implement multiple drives into a single headphone. What we want most is multiple, high quality drivers.

The headphones I’m using right now are known as the Shure 530s. Each unit has 3, high quality drivers. That’s 6 speakers after the math. And multiple speakers means one thing, proper frequency displacement. So I can literally hear the bass guitar frequencies through a different speaker than I hear the vocals. This results in a natural sound that is so balanced it literally creates an atmosphere that you can feel yourself surrounded in. Furthermore, because they are ear canal headphones, all outer sound is completely sealed out and you’re left with nothing but beauty. I’ve gone through dozens of headphones and I can easily say that not only are they the best headphones that I’ve ever used, but I’ll never be able to listen to music with anything less.

Here’s a true, fun story for you. The first time I used these headphones was on my way home from school. Saosin – Bury Your Head – randomly came onto my iPod. The music was so powerful that I had to stop walking and sit down to catch my breath. Although it’s a song I’ve heard hundreds of times before, it was so different, so harmonic, that my knees gave way to each high-hat hit. When I got home that day, I sat down in my comfy chair and lost myself in the music for hours. Pure bliss.

Bottom line: if you really enjoy music, you owe it to yourself to buy an expensive pair of headphones. Because until you do, you can’t appreciate what the musicians had in mind. Do yourself a favor and buy a set of nice cans instead of buying more music. Otherwise you’re simply wasting what you already have. Your jaw will hit the floor when you listen actually hear your favorite song.