Headset specs question

What are some things to look for in a good set of earphones?

Do you mean headphones? Or Headsets (with a mic)?

Headphones, don't need no stinkin' mic...lol

Well first you'd probally decide at either open or closed headphones.Closed Ear headphones usually have a dB rating that it blocks out.Whereas Open eared are much like the foam headphones that go over your ear but do not cover it completely.

My terms are probally wrong, but the idea isn't.

Next I would look at range output, this is the Hz rating the lower it starts and the higher it goes the better range you will get, which is what you need for high quality sound reproduction(basically hearing it the way it was meant to be heard).Think of putting in a bass CD in a 5 dollar boombox and a bass cd in moderately priced car sound system. When you listen to the CD on the boombox you will not "hear" the lows infact they won't even play if so they are extremely feint or just distorted.

Next try to pair up your soundcard with those specs, keep in mind that most consumer cards until you get into the professional sound cards (Layla which is the budget professional card iirc) won't have a very high powered amp built in. By high powered I mean ohm rating output, for instance the soundblaster x-fi series wouldn't justify a pair of hd-580's since those headphones have a power rating of 300 ohms, so to get the most out of them you would need to run them through an amplifer.To compare it would be like hooking up a pair of 10's to a stock radio/amp. The difference wouldn't be AS much but it would be there.

With most high end quality headphones you will want a headphone amplifer for them. Basically you hook the amp to your soundcard and your headphones to your amplifer.

To get an idea of what the difference you could listen to headphones through the soundcard and then through a pair of speakers with a built in amplifer with a headphone input.It won't sound nearly as good as any headphone amp but it is very noticeable.

Another way would be to hook them up to a receiver and then your pc and play the same track but this is much more difficult because the sound processors are completely different and the settings are not equal.However you would hear quite a bit more range/clarity/punch through the receiver.

You can find much more elaborate information on head-fi.org .As I am only a novice at best

I apologize if anything I've stated is wrong or the terminology was butchered, this is just my understanding.

With a good pair of headphones an amplifier is almost a must, or else your wasting your time
Sound is only as good as its weakest link

So I will look for a good set of headphones with their own little amp, thanks for the info.