Ranges printed with a tolerance

A frequency range without a tolerance says nothing. “5 Hz – 50 kHz” does not claim the headphone plays 5 Hz at a useful level; it claims a microphone picked something up there, and the sentence stays true if it is thirty decibels down. The figure that turns it into a claim is the ±dB beside it.

Of the 490 models whose maker prints a range, 58 print that figure too — these ones, from 7 different makers. Every row quotes the sheet character for character, including the measurement standard where one is named. No measurement is published here and none is needed: the point of the list is who wrote down enough to be checked.

Sorted by maker. The full audit counts what everyone else prints.

The table shows the first 20 of 58. The rest are in the full headphone database, where every figure is labelled with where it came from.

432 of the 490 models whose maker prints a range are not on this list because their makers printed a range with no ±dB figure beside it. That is not a failure of the product; it is a range that cannot be checked, which is the whole reason this list exists.

This is not a ranking of sound quality and cannot be. It sorts one number that manufacturers printed, and manufacturers do not print anything about how their products sound. Every row links to that product’s own page, where each figure is labelled with the document it came from.

Quietest sources for sensitive in-ears · Lowest published output impedance · Most power into 300 Ω · Sources with a complete spec sheet · Sources nothing cheaper replaces · Sources that drive everything here · Audio interfaces as headphone amplifiers · Sources under $100 · Hardest headphones to drive · Most sensitive in-ears · Quietest desktop sources · What balanced actually gains · Portable players by power · Most power per dollar · High-impedance headphones