Are you in the market for a booming new pair of bass headphones? Good quality headphones with awesome bass are actually quite easy to find and you won’t have to sacrifice your mids and treble in the process.

To find the best bass headphones, just keep these three qualities in mind as you shop around.

Sound Isolation and Noise Cancellation

Both sound isolation and noise cancellation help you to enjoy the music you are listening to without the distraction of surrounding noise. A good set of bass headphones will also work to keep in the sound of whatever you are listening to.

Sound isolation is achieved by the padding on the headphones and how well the ear pads fit and seal around your ears. Bearing that in mind, you’ll want to opt for over-the-ear instead of on-ear headphones. Also, over-the-ear headphones can be either closed-back or open-back. The closed-back ones tend to do a better job at sound isolation.

Noise cancellation is accomplished by the headphones’ battery-powered circuitry which analyzes incoming noise and emits sound waves of its own to effectively cancel them. These headphones work very well, especially in places with monotonous or droning noise such in a factory or on an airplane, but are generally much more expensive.

Driver Size

Drivers are the headphones’ core features as they convert electrical signal to sound energy. The types include moving coil or dynamic drivers; balanced armature drivers; planar magnetic drivers; and electrostatic drivers. Moving coil drivers are the most common and are credited with giving you powerful bass output.

When it comes to your bass headphones’ drivers, size matters but only to a point. Bigger drivers will typically give greater bass output. Too large drivers, however, are likely to distort the overall sound quality since they don’t reproduce high frequencies very well. Plus, headphones with very large drivers will have larger ear pads and may be too heavy or visually unappealing for anything but at-home use.

So, what should you be looking for in terms of driver size? 30 mm to 50 mm is a good range to shop in. You can go above 50 mm if bass is REALLY important to you!  There are plenty of detailed buying guides online which compare the drivers on headphones for bass lovers. You can check out a few to see what’s available.

Frequency Response Range

The frequency response range of your headphones is another specification you will want to look at. As you shop for bass headphones, you’ll find many with specs which read in the 10 Hz –  25,000 Hz range, with the lower number being the bass frequency.

Given that a range of 20 Hz – 20,000 Hz is all the human ear can pick up, you might be wondering why you would want headphones that go so low. While you won’t hear those lower-than-20 Hz frequencies – they’re the bass tones you’ll feel and that’s a good thing!

Now you know just what to look for in your new bass headphones. So, go get yourself a pair and start enjoying that awesome backbeat!