In partnership with Marshall
We all know that there’s something ritualistic about playing records. Browse your collection and flip through each record until it catches your eye. Admire the artwork and pour out the liner notes and lyrics. Slide the disc out of the sleeve, carefully blow out any dust, then carefully place it on the turntable. That little crackle when you lower the stylus and the needle drops. It’s truly heaven. So let’s add one more thing to this to-do list. That means putting headphones on your ears. Turn off those speakers. There’s no better way to listen to your favorite music than with high-quality cans…
you are a captive audience
It sounds obvious, but when you wear headphones, you’re physically connected to a vinyl record. Like an umbilical cord, connecting directly to your favorite albums will help you focus. Turn on these cans, connect the leads to your stereo system, and you won’t have to wander into the kitchen to do the dishes while the music fades into background noise. You are there to listen, focus, and absorb. With this in mind, music can be a powerful and powerful experience.
banish the speaker blues
No matter how good your speakers are, finding the right setup for the perfect listening experience isn’t as easy as you might think. Each room has different acoustics, dramatically changing your audio experience. The truth is, we’ve all played around with “toe-in,” the process of tilting a speaker inward rather than forward in order to properly direct the sound waves into your ear. A good pair of cans like Marshall’s new Monitor III ANC solves that problem for the perfect vinyl experience.
Even more cost-effective
When shopping for a vinyl setup, it’s easy to go wild for expensive speakers and amplifiers to go with your turntable. However, top-of-the-line headphones can be purchased for less, making them an inexpensive way to enjoy music without sacrificing quality. To be honest, I’m not even anti-social. If you live in an apartment or share a house, your neighbors or roommates will thank you for giving them the latest death metal records all to themselves.
the devil is in the details
Forget CDs and streaming, vinyl is the most authentic way to listen to records. On a more technical note, dynamic range, frequency range, and compression level all affect the sound of your track. And vinyl extracts more information from its grooves than any other medium. Wearing headphones surrounds you with warm, rich analog sound that is impossible with digital mediums, allowing you to absorb every nuance of an artist’s records. And yes, you will hear the bad as well as the good. Vinyl can be prone to static crackling as the stylus picks up scratches on the record’s surface. But isn’t that half the fun of playing records? Authenticity has never felt so good.
Perfect complement to your vinyl collection.
The last few years have seen a huge resurgence in vinyl sales as a new generation embraces the joy of purchasing music on physical media. If you can think of your record collection as an expression of your very soul, listening to records through headphones becomes an important part of that. A pair of cans that show you’re a discerning collector reinforces the notion that you’re taking the art of music listening to a new level. When you choose the right headphones, you’re showing off in style that you’re serious about your music.
Experience music like a pro…
Musicians and producers use headphones for a variety of reasons. In the studio, I use this when recording to hear both the other instruments’ audio and my own instrument’s audio, as well as to avoid recording unwanted interference. On stage, headphones help singers hear their own voices, audio cues, and instruments during live performances. Listening to records at home with headphones is a way to enjoy music the way the pros intended. BGM disappears. Using a can brings that to the forefront.
Admire the album art…
Streaming platforms like Spotify mean that the art of listening to an album from the first song to the last is increasingly lost as consumers shuffle or randomly select music. However, the musicians have thought carefully about how the album transitions from track to track, and the record is a perfect physical representation of this. Do you really want to start playing Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon” in the middle? LP stands for “long-playing” records, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a medium that takes you on a journey. Adding comfortable headphones to your experience will help you absorb your records the way they were intended.
