Comfortable headphones: How accurate are the Rtings.com ratings?

[shaunakde]

Hey,

 

I have been reading rtings.com reviews for quite sometime now, but have never paid particular attention to their "comfort" scale. I was able to try out a pair of SHP9500 from Phillips recently (they have one of the highest comfort scores on that site) and I must say, it was quite the experience. The clamping force was light and the pads were soft. It didn't even annoy me with glasses on! 

 

I was curious to see if anyone has experience with some other highly rated (for comfort, on that site) and if they live upto the ratings. For instance the following headphones got the same scores:

• 8.5 Bose QuietComfort 25/QC25
• 8.5 Sennheiser HD 598
• 8.5 Bose SoundLink 2 Wireless
• 8.5 Bose QuietComfort 35 II/QC35 II Wireless 2018

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with both the SHP9500s and any of these other headphones - and can comment on the comfort (maybe with glasses on) of the others? I ask this because I would love to start building a list for people who wear glasses, like good headphones but are willing to sacrifice ultimate audio quality of not being impaled by their vision devices  

 

Thanks for your time!

[pythonmegapixel]

Well... my headset (HyperX Cloud 2) recieves 5.6 out of 10 for wireless gaming, despite being wired, sooooo....

[shaunakde]

4 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Well... my headset (HyperX Cloud 2) recieves 5.6 out of 10 for wireless gaming, despite being wired, sooooo....

LOL. I suspected some of the ratings were BS  - Technically you could use them wirelessly - to listen to the background radiation of the visible universe, but you would need to replace your ears with an upgraded model

[Duckson McQuack]

I've been wondering too since I dunno about their more technical ratings for something that's very preference oritented like headphones.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

10 minutes ago, Duckson McQuack said:

I've been wondering too since I dunno about their more technical ratings for something that's very preference oritented like headphones.

There is some truth to their technical ratings on the sound quality side.

If you want something with a nice wide sound stage, get something where the response graph is relatively flat across all frequencies. If you want something with more bass, then look for something that skews more towards the bass side. 

[shaunakde]

15 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

 

If you want something with a nice wide sound stage, get something where the response graph is relatively flat across all frequencies. If you want something with more bass, then look for something that skews more towards the bass side. 

Thanks for the tip! I am more looking to make sure they are very comfortable more than anything else. I honestly don't have strong preferences in response curves, but I do enjoy the open soundstage of the Phillips pair. 

[Spuriae]

Rtings has great test data. The rating numbers can be misleading; they're just a quick approximate ranking tool (in the case of comfort, based on subjective impressions, clamping force, and weight) that exists so you can filter and quick-compare things more easily.

 

From past recollection (I don't own either of these anymore) the QC25/35 and HD598 are fairly comfortable with glasses due to their low clamp force. The Senns can be a bit iffy at the smaller settings because of the deceptively stiff pads which do apply pressure to glasses arms. Velour pads also have a tendency to squeak when rubbing against certain glasses. Both had cup depths too short for my ears (not a glasses issue). The Bose pads had a lot of give though, which made them apply minimal extra pressure on my glasses.

 

Glasses users may also be interested in the bass frequency response consistency (which correlates somewhat with how the sound will change when glasses break the cup seal).

 

Personally for comfort I just bend the heck out of the headbands of every headphone I buy to reduce the clamping force. Works most of the time.

[rice guru]

I don't personally think it's super accurate rtngs does ok sometimes questionable results and often take to objectivity  more than subjectivity. But in terms of comfort a lot can be don't to fix comfort, pad swapping , bending the headbands are some pretty easy ways to do it. I also wear glasses. And find most headphones fairly comfortable  if the pads are cushy and clamp isn't murder and the earholes are big enough to fit my whole ear or proper on ear. The only time the pads are too small are when it's a in between on and over ear.

[Derkoli]

Their comfort rating for the M40X's is way too high. They're pretty uncomfortable, and they get a 6.5/10. I'm currently reducing the clamp force which should fix things however.

 

Really, if you want to compare headphones strictly based on sound, you use Sean Olive's preference ratings. It's a fairly simple system to compare different headphones to each other, based upon a few set parameters. It's incredibly accurate, and Amir's impressions from ASR nearly always match the preference rating for loudspeakers.

 

Patent for the exact preference ratings system:

 

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190087739A1/en?inventor=Sean+Olive