The Best songs to test headphones: a professional's take

As one of the most-read headphone reviewers in history (man, that makes my skin crawl), one of the most common questions I get is: “What are the best songs to test headphones?” After all, I should know, right? Most people don’t like the answer I’ve been giving for decades, but that’s mainly because people asking this question want a list of tracks that are objectively going to make any headphone review a cakewalk. But if you think that there’s a perfect song to test headphones out there, everything you know about the craft is wrong.

But don’t worry, I’ve got you.

How to get the best songs to test headphones

Despite the existence of tons of lists online, there isn’t an objective answer. No matter how many times people in HiFi swear by the Eagles’ hit Hotel California or Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, the truth is that headphones have to satisfy the listener, and only you are going to be able to tell the world what songs are best to test headphones… for your head. Anyone professing that one song is better than others to test headphones is missing the point, and misleading you — so go ahead and close all those tabs of other articles if they give you specific songs. If you’ll allow me to be your guide, I’ll lead you to the answer.

Necessary background

Before I give up the big secret here, there’s a few things you need to know in order to understand what I’m about to tell you.

Consider what you’re actually doing when you yourself are testing headphones. What does that mean? If you’re looking for more granular points about the performance of a device, shouldn’t you be focusing on how to assess that? Even if you believe that measurements are silly, surely you recognize that all elements in your listening setup should get music to your ears as unchanged from the original as possible? In that light, the following should be a little more obvious:

1. Familiarity with a song and all of its little elements is the most important thing for anyone to test headphones.
2. Music you don’t listen to very often is a poor choice to test headphones because you might not catch anything that’s missing, altered, or affected in a negative way.

It’s extremely important to note that all the little tracks, elements, instruments, qualities and foibles combine to make up the piece of art. In this case, it’s a song. If an audio product’s job is to get the music to your ears as unchanged as possible, you first have to have a pretty good idea what that unchanged song sounds like, and be able to identify exactly what’s gone wrong when you hear it. This is why many reviewers tend to talk about popular songs that are a few decades old. By drawing upon experiences that could be shared with many others, writers can more effectively address sensory information that may be shared across the reviewer’s audience.

With that in mind, you’re ready for your journey.

Shut up already, tell me what to do

Alright, fine. If you just want your answer, here’s a step-by-step guide.

1. Open your streaming service or library of choice. Bonus points if you have a lossless option available.
2. Navigate to your library’s “favorites” section.
3. Play your favorite music, and create a playlist of the songs you’re most familiar with. Try to get different songs from a wide array of genres, moods, and pacings. The more varied your playlist, the more situations you’ll be able to test.
4. Listen to the playlist with the headphones you want to test. Record your thoughts, impressions and notes.

The best songs to test headphones with for you, the individual testing headphones, will be included in the playlist after step 3. That’s it. There’s your answer. Those are the best songs to test your headphones with.

How to use a song to test headphones

Once you have your playlist of songs to test headphones, just start listening. Eliminate distractions, but let your mind wander when deciding to focus on parts of the songs you listen to. Your brain will notice when things sound “off” and try to figure out what it is exactly that’s amiss. Over time, you’ll learn to catalog these issues, and become adept at putting your proverbial finger on common pain points. It’s okay if you listen to something multiple times.

If you want to go hyper-nerd about it, you can always compare your impressions to our measurements to see if the issue is something you don’t like about frequency response. You could also use a program to visualize your music with something called a spectrogram to see if you can hunt and find parts of your music that were hard to hear. If they show up on the spectrogram but you can’t hear them, there may be something going on worth investigating!

For those of you wanting to train your own ears to be as critical as they can be, you have a few options.

1. Cut your teeth with Erin’s demonstration using pink noise.
2. Complete the Harman How to Listen program.
3. Muck about SoundGym for a spell to increase your skills.
4. Practice making your own music, and train yourself to identify sounds you don’t like.

The sky’s the limit. Go get listening!