There is a first time for everything: to look at the sea, to listen to our recorded voice, for a family Sunday meal… to put on headphones. That first time in particular may have different aspects, but it is always like entering, with only one sense (that of hearing) in the body, into a velvet room: the music stopped being in the air and began to be inside.
It was a pioneering, almost biological experience: a proprioception of hearing. As if the world, for a moment, had learned to whisper, to whisper to us. Since then, every headset we use tries to recreate that initial sensation: that of intimate amazement. For me, that whispering room is called the Audio-Technica ATH-R70xa.
It took time until I understood (and then could name) that feeling: luthiers of sound. Audio-Technica manufactures them in Japan with a precision that borders on artisanal. Each of them is assembled and calibrated manually so that both halves, left and right, match in frequency and balance.
Its open design allows air to circulate through a honeycomb mesh, eliminating resonances. The result is an object so light (199 grams) that it disappears, and in doing so, allows sound to appear.
Shiwaku Nonomi, the engineer who leads the process, has been living in this, once again, velvet room for more than a decade.. And it is she who compares it to the work of a luthier: “Each earphone has a voice, you have to listen to it before letting it out.”And he is right.
There is an almost moral difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive: a reflection, a vibration that arrives. Listening, on the other hand, requires presence, will. It is paying attention to the invisible. And in that exchange of paying something, in this case attention, our brain also exchanges… changes.
It leads us to listen to the singer’s breathing, the touch of the bow, the space between two notes. And, when an empty space becomes a detectable sound (silence), it is when we understand that listening is a way of being, first. And after being. In a time of constant noise, of need to express opinions, we should learn to listen, as much as to speak.
There is a deep reason why sound touches us so directly. It doesn’t matter if we understand what Elton John says when he “dedicates” His Song to us or if Nina Simone “Feels Good,” because the reality is that we don’t understand his words. Just the emotion of their voices.
Smell is the sense most closely linked to memory: has direct passage to the brain without passing through the thalamusbut sound occupies second place in that emotional hierarchy. Both senses access memories without asking permission from reason.
When we hear something, a song, a voice, the sound of the wind, the sound is not only processed in the auditory cortex. It also activates the limbic system, the territory where emotions are born. There, in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex, neurotransmitters such as dopamine (pleasure) and serotonin (mood) are released, while cortisol, the stress hormone, decreases. Listening to music is literally a way to modify the body: the pulse slows down, the pressure drops, breathing becomes deeper.
It is no coincidence that, after a few minutes with the R70xa, the world seems more breathable. It is not suggestion; It’s neurophysiology.And the interesting thing in this sense is that I have begun to use them not only to listen, but also not to listen. And in the process I have discovered that silence also has textures.
The ATH-R70xa are loyal not because of their brand, but because of their way of not interfering. Its flat response (5 Hz to 40 kHz) reveals what is there and silences what is not. In a studio, that honesty is crucial: it shows flaws, nuances, breaths. But outside the studio, that same transparency becomes a poetic act: sonic truth as a form of beauty.
In technical terms, This number indicates the range of frequencies that the headphones can reproduce. The human ear perceives, on average, from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. The first are the deep bass, which is around 20 Hz (the rumble of thunder or a double bass). At the other extreme are the treble that goes up to 20 kHz.
Thus, when we see a wider range, as in the case of the R70xa, it does not mean that we can hear those frequencies at both ends, but rather that the headphones reproduce the full audible range without distortion. And with that they put on the table uA question that all humans have asked ourselves: if something exists, but we cannot perceive it through any sense, is it real?
The answer of the R70xa is affirmative: as with dark matter, which we cannot perceive and only detect by the traces it leaves, these headphones also leave a testimony that goes beyond sound as a refuge and has to do with a decision, that of hearing the unheard of, as an act of sensory rebellion: Sometimes listening, and not just hearing, is still the most human way to be silent.