I remember more than twenty years ago buying a fancy, fairly expensive set of headphones for a Sony Walkman cassette player. It was Koss headphones and they brought a whole new level to the terrible music that teenage me was subjecting myself to. For the first time, I was able to distinguish words from music, and could really hear the entire song as it was meant to be heard. I have no idea what the response range was, or what the ohms rating was, at 14 I didn’t care and wouldn’t have really understood if I had bothered to look. All I really cared about was that they were loud enough to hurt and drown out all other sounds while I was out running the town and being moody.

Since those times, I have developed a somewhat more refined taste in audio, but one thing holds true, I like my music loud and clear. I know that listening to things as loud as I do is bad for me; I just keep hoping that graphene will really take off and I will be able to afford a good pair of hearing aids when the time comes. Nowadays, I do not listen to cassettes or walk the streets with nowhere to go any more, but I do still use headphones every single day. Being a gamer that loves online games and needs to communicate with teammates, I use headphones with a microphone, and I am sure I’m not alone in this. I think headphones are as necessary to gaming as the controller or a good keyboard/mouse combo. No one can stay on the move and type out directions or make calls in real time without verbal, audio communication.