i went to a qualcomm presentation at CES a decade ago where they demoed surround sound with basic cheap stereo cans and it was impressive as hell. i was always surprised it never seemed to take off as a general thing.
my 2 cents is that it's really tough to market high quality audio despite a clear market willing to buy high quality audio.
There are dozens of ostensibly high quality brands selling 500 dollar headphones with drastically different audio quality. The audiophile community would often have you believe that all such headphones are junk and a random small brand has the best headphones of all.
At least tvs have color accuracy/size/price. Headphones are not measured with any clear metric of quality as far as I've seen..
It is no different from other products. There are people who do subjective reviews, and others who put some science in it.
Although, as far as I understand, headphones are both quite simple in engineering and complex with the task they try to handle.
Every person's audio perception is unique and depends on unique anatomy and unique experience (brain calculations). So it is quite difficult to normalize every data we can measure.
Still, some are trying to do it. E.g.
http://rtings.com/ - authors develop their methodology to take into account all relevant measurements, and explain their function
http://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/ - author does a measurement based subjective analysis of overall audio experience. Sometimes directly comparing rivals in relevant aspects.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990 - based on research from Harman R&D, measure and develops equalisation parameters for popular headphones, as well as, their weighted score (deviation from target)
The research is quite interesting in itself when addressing you statement, because it develops a statistical model of preference for audio reproduction by average human. Of course, it is not a silver bullet equal for all but many agree they enjoy headphones with "target" frequency response more.
Just because a brand isn't "mainstream" doesn't mean they're small.
the root of the issue is audio is highly subjective so what sounds good for you may sound awful for me. Confound that with other variables such as amps and dacs (tubes, class A, "warm" vs "cold") and it's a total mess.
Second headphones ARE measured with a clear metric, you have frequency response graphs and distortion graphs which paint a objective picture about how the headphones sound.
The problem is that audio quality is subjective at the end of the day. Maybe you like the Harman target, someone else prefers Olive-Welti, and I might prefer the diffuse field target. You can't say one is better than the other, just one is better for a specific person.
So it ends up that most places just post the measurement curves and expect you to learn how to read and compare them yourselves.
I think there needs to be a standard "demo" reel of audio quality, similar to the way TVs/displays have the multi-color grid/gradient thing for showing clarity of the pixels.
It's hard to compare when a person goes into one shop and hears an action movie, but in another one he hears a concert/symphony on a different speaker/headset.
Didn't it? I thought games, at least, all did this by default since ever? I remember positional audio being a thing back when I was learning DirectX 3.
sure it works to some extent but it’s basically never marketed as anything like an immersive soundscape (for lack of a better term) or surround sound. like, i should be able to put on a simple pair of headphones and reliably get a surround experience for any content that supports it on pc or mobile. it’s probably patent encumbrance which is why we see a dolby plugin in the microsoft store and stereo headphones marketed as surround for a (often substantially) higher price with an included dongle to virtualize the audio
There are dozens of ostensibly high quality brands selling 500 dollar headphones with drastically different audio quality. The audiophile community would often have you believe that all such headphones are junk and a random small brand has the best headphones of all.
At least tvs have color accuracy/size/price. Headphones are not measured with any clear metric of quality as far as I've seen..