drumming secrets

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Metrophones

A couple of years ago the American company Metrophones launched a new line of products called… Metrophones. If you take a closer look at this name you might find that it is actually a combination of the words metronome and headphone. Once you ‘ve reached this point I’m sure you can guess what this device does. The idea is indeed quite simple: You take a nice pair of headphones and save your customers a lot of cable related trouble by building a metronome inside one of the cans.

The metronome it self is quite primitive. The controls are limited to: on/off,  tempo and volume. The click sound consists of only one tone so it’s not possible to set a specific time signature.

The built in metronome is not the only feature that distinguishes the Metrophones from other studio headphones. Instead of just dampening all the noise from outside the headphones the Metrophones seem to EQ that noise. The rumble in the low mid frequencies that sometimes makes it impossible to hear what you ‘re doing  is being filtered out by the cans. On the other hand, higher frequencies like those produced by cymbals and snaredrums don’t seem to be affected at all.

Metrophones have especially been designed for drummers. Comparing them to hifi headphones wouldn’t make much sense because their goal is not to make things sound good. Beside their own drumsound drummers should be able to hear the music or clicktrack they’re playing to and that is exactly what Metrophones do.

By Stefan Verster of Drumstudio 106