listener's Headphone Ranking

Disclaimer: This list is comprised of my (listener) subjective ratings of headphones based on my individual experience. I am not claiming these judgments to be universal.

Each individual metric shown in the columns below are scored out of 10, with the Overall score being a weighted average taking Bass, Midrange, Treble, X-Factor, Comfort, and Value into account, while the Sound score is a weighted average that only takes the first four metrics into account.

The color-coding scale goes from Blue at the best, to Beige in the middle, to Red at the worst.

The weighting, ranked in terms of importance, is as follows:

Sound Score:
Treble = Midrange > Bass >> X-Factor

Overall Score:
Treble = Comfort >> Bass = Midrange = X-Factor = Value

These weightings were chosen to reflect my own priorities when judging headphones. One may notice that there are no 10/10 (or even 9/10) headphones on this list, and that’s because even most of my favorite headphones are not well-rounded enough that they do everything 100% right, and thus the areas where they perform less well are considered in the averaging.

In terms of individual metrics, Bass, Mids, Treble, and Comfort are likely self-explanatory, but I should note that they subjectively ranked; it’s not based on any sort of measured performance.

X-Factor merits an explanation: I am not the type to focus on what people call "technicalities," but there are times when tunings with compromised timbre have other aspects of presentation that are enjoyable. Competent tuning is the best way to balance dynamic punch, texturing, and spaciousness, but weird tuning quirks can elicit their own versions of these qualities! That's why I've opted to include a score that enfolds these qualities for those who care about that stuff, while opting to purposely not be specific about which thing it does well for me (aside from the Notes section) in order to minimize people getting the wrong idea. These qualities are going to be subjective, just as the frequency response we receive at our eardrums and our perspectives on sound reproduction are going to be subjective.

Some other info:

This ranking is going to be continuously updated as I hear more products; just because something is a 7/10 now, doesn't mean it always will be in the future.
Reviewers, including me, are all biased to some extent, and while I'll try my best to hedge against that, you need to know that before going into this list.

I tend to like neutral headphones with treble that isn't overly-boosted, but timbral accuracy isn't the only metric I'm indexing for on this list. I can get down with colored signatures as long as they don't totally abandon a sense of coherence or balance.

Other Lists: