Image: Wikimedia Commons

headphone

Small loudspeakers worn on the head for listening to music or for communications purposes

Also known as circumaural headphones · over-ear headphones · supra-aural headphones · on-ear headphones · headphones

Instance of: audio equipment
, accessory
Subclass of: loudspeaker

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an audio source privately, in contrast to a loudspeaker, which emits sound into the open air for anyone nearby to hear. Headphones are also known as earphones or, colloquially, cans. Circumaural and supra-aural headphones use a band over the top of the head to hold the drivers in place. Another type, known as earbuds or earpieces, consists of individual units that plug into the user's ear canal; within that category have been developed cordless air buds using wireless technology. A third type are bone conduction headphones, which typically wrap around the back of the head and rest in front of the ear canal, leaving the ear canal open. In the context of telecommunication, a headset is a combination of a headphone and microphone.

Overview

All data

63 statements · 24% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Unicode character: 🎧
MCN code: 8518.30.00
Different from: handset
headset
earphone
sound transducer
in-ear monitor
Uses: sound transducer
Social media followers: 948,168(May 23, 2023) subreddit: headphones
Discovered by: Ernest Mercadier
Studied by: audiology
speech-language pathology
otolaryngology
Has effect: noise-induced hearing loss
1
Sources
1.w.wiki/LT2v
View statement on Wikidata ↗
acoustic trauma
1
Sources
1.w.wiki/LT2v
View statement on Wikidata ↗

On other databases

42 identifiers linking headphone across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

24%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 12, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

Suggest a fact or correction

Links

Use this data

curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q186819

API docs, limits & keys

Cite this page

AIDb. (2026). headphone (Q186819). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/headphone-Q186819