Meet the mad scientist of headphones, whose wild designs electrify Reddit

The standard shape for big, chunky headphones has long been a rainbow with Moon Pies at either end. No rule exists, however, forcing audio companies to keep making them that way.

Philip Kaplan, the tech entrepreneur behind Tiny Letter and DistroKid, has been proving as much all year. The tireless tinkerer has lately turned the world of headphones into his own personal sandbox, with wild designs that fluctuate between a shark cage for your head, a beer-can helmet full of subwoofers, and Maleficent-style goat horns. Through boundless curiosity, a cheeky sense of humor, and plenty of elbow grease, the mad scientist of headphones has become the toast of audio Reddit—and possibly your next obsession.

Kaplan, who bears a passing resemblance to Steve Jobs, has been interested in audio quality his entire life. The longtime "> drummer even published a children’s book on music production in 2022. As far as his keen interest in headphones is concerned, though, his origin story begins with a summer job at an electronics store. The 15-year-old Kaplan used his employee discount to buy his first pair of serious, high-quality headphones: the Koss Porta Pro Jr., which went for a then-whopping $25. It was the first time he experienced true bass so vividly. Much like the man in "> the infamous Maxwell tape ad from the ‘80s, the sound quality blew him away.

“It was like getting a deep-tissue brain massage,” Kaplan recalls. Since then, he has been chasing similar highs, forever in search of the next sound experience that could rattle his bones and rewire his circuitry. Early in 2024, he started creating these experiences himself.

Experiments in headphone design

Kaplan had been rehearsing with his band in a studio space, each member donning headphones. The audio quality on Kaplan’s pair was poor. Worse than that, it was a distraction. He fiddled with the equalization setting for a while, but it didn’t improve what he was hearing. Eventually, his software engineer instincts kicked in. He realized he might be able to improve the  headphones’ sound by modifying them.

After rehearsal, he cracked open the hardware and started experimenting. He disassembled the small AKG headphones and used electrical tape to put them inside bigger ear cups. The results were prohibitively messy, but the improvement in sound quality was near what he’d hoped for. He never ended up quite finishing those headphones, however, because digging around inside their guts had given him ideas that extended far beyond the scope of that particular project. 

Suddenly, he had several more high-priority design ideas that needed seeing to.

As a novice headphone engineer, Kaplan was at a slight disadvantage. His expertise was limited to computers. “I knew nothing,” he says of his earliest experiments.

It’s incredible, though, just how much one can learn simply from watching YouTube videos on soldering technique and how to use 3D printing. Whatever information Kaplan couldn’t find that way, he was able to get out of ChatGPT. Inspired by Dan Clark Audio’s unconventional creations—like ovoid-shaped speakers and collapsible headbands—Kaplan began churning out headphones that Alien designer HR Giger might admire.

One favorite is the set Kaplan calls the Bob. A variation on the helmet-like Jecklin Float headphones created in the 1970s, Bob looks like a torture device encasing one’s entire head. According to Kaplan, though, it sounds “velvety smooth, with no harshness.” Like many of his out-there designs, he needed to tweak several versions of it before getting to the one he wanted. It took a lot of experimenting to get the ventilated casings on either side of the user’s head to angle down and provide a seal for the massive ear pads within. 

“If I get lucky, I can design a headphone at night and assemble it the next day,” Kaplan says of his process. “But some take weeks of prototyping and trial-and-error before they work.”

Pushing the limits of headphones

Some of these experiments are meant to test various acoustic phenomena. Ol’ Thumpy, for instance, which affixes bowling-ball-size orbs on either side of the user’s head, was his attempt to play with “Helmholtz resonance,” or wind throb (think: the noise that comes from blowing across the mouth of a soda bottle). Kaplan was a little surprised it actually worked as intended.

Other experiments are meant to solve practical problems. He developed the Intruder, for instance, so that his wife could talk to him even when he’s jamming out to music. The model features a comically large, Acme-style red button anyone can press to mute the headphones. It serves a useful function, even if its name is nearly as insulting as that of the Lazy Susan.

Though some observers might suspect such designs as the Grand Cru, which comes impaled with a dozen wine corks on either side; or the Swole, which have dumbbells attached to them; are purely jokes, Kaplan dispels that notion.

“They all start with, I wonder what it would sound like if headphones had x . . . or why doesn’t anyone make headphones that do y . . . ,” he says.

The ridiculous-looking EyePhone, for example, which could be deadly for a pedestrian to wear, developed from Kaplan moving around the transducers, or drivers, to find out which location around the head would make the soundstage most expansive. (It turned out to be over the eyes.)

Whether some of these headphones are purely satirical or not, Kaplan is not short on ideas. He keeps a running list of them, now tallying into the hundreds, and introduces new ones each week on his website, Pud’s Small Batch Headphones. (“Pud” is a childhood nickname he attained from bullies and has since reclaimed.) Of course, not every experiment has been a success, though. Kaplan’s idea for a headphone with a built-in USB-C dongle—called Dong, naturally—is currently on its third iteration, with no functioning prototype in sight.

Through documenting his audiophiliac journey on his website, in Reddit’s r/headphones community, and in a recent series of YouTube videos, Kaplan has developed a cult following online.

“This dude is the greatest thing to ever happen to this sub,” reads the most upvoted comment on Kaplan’s r/headphones post about the BubbRubb, a headphone set that defies easy description and is, quite intentionally, “the worst-sounding headphone you’ve ever heard.”

Crafting a Reddit following

Once he began posting his work online, Kaplan fit right in among Reddit’s tight-knit headphone-enthusiast community and now considers many of its members his friends. The more adventurous among the group made the trek to the headphone convention CanJam SoCal 2024 back in September, to hear what Kaplan’s creations actually sound like. Based on "> the video footage that emerged from the event, his devices did not disappoint.

Although some people have offered to buy Kaplan’s designs as art pieces and others as consumer electronics, he currently has no plans to sell them. For now, headphone conventions like CanJam are the only way for curious audiophiles to give them a test-drive. That is, unless Bose or Apple or any other audio innovators attempt similar experiments anytime soon.

“There’s so much stuff you can fit into a headphone if you don’t need it to be small,” Kaplan says. “As long as it’s comfortable enough, the size shouldn’t really matter. Unless you’re in the middle seat on an airplane.” 

https://www.fastcompany.com/91248569/meet-the-mad-scientist-of-headphones-reddit-philip-kaplan?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss