Let’s face it, most headphones have terrible bass response. You can buy super bass headphones as advertised on the packaging and get lukewarm bass at best. Those of us who love bass want headphones that can vibrate your face when playing. What kind of headphones do that? Many headsets that are designed for DJ use have great bass. As we all know, professional disk jockeys want serious bass just like their speaker systems produce. When it comes to headphones, there are two ways to serious bass, go large or go tiny. Surprisingly, tiny earbud headphones can have terrific bass. The weird thing about them is that nobody hears a thing and to you, the bass is rattling your brain.

Really tiny earbud bass headphones work by doing two things. The first thing they do is isolate external noises. The part of the device that fits in your ear canal is made up of a special cellular foam which is very sound absorbent and springy so it molds precisely to the inside of your ear. This airtight seal assures that the tiny vibrations produced by these earbuds is heard by your ears as very loud sound. Because of the geometry and proximity to your ear, not much movement is needed from the diaphragm of the drivers to produce this loud volume. As a result, the sound is not distorted as it might be with traditional speakers. Please keep in mind that since you also won’t be able to hear yourself speaking with these, you will most definitely be yelling if someone asks you a question.

On the other side of the spectrum are the very large bass headphones. These headphones take the opposite approach and go large. Typically, they fit over the ears and seal out noise by covering and isolating the whole ear. The diaphragms of these headsets are very large. They produce heavy bass without even breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, they are not subtle. Wearing them to work is a but problematic, especially if you are trying to fit in. They stick out like a sore thumb and are also heavy so your ears might get a little tired after a while because of the cups pressing on the side of your head all day long.