Headphone Comfort and Pad Size— The best headphones to buy if you don’t want them to touch your ears.

I’ve become one of “those people.”

If you’re friends with audiophiles, or if you’ve read headphone reviews online, or if you’ve got a friend who is way into headphones like me…you’ll know the sort of person I’m talking about:

I’m now one of those people that doesn’t want headphones to touch my ears. At all.

The cavernous maw of a DT770 pad. Even though it’s circular, there’s more than enough room for my ears in there. Great!

Thanks to my recent ear infection adventures, I decided that people who don’t want pads touching their ears might really be onto something.

Of course, this was always a factor I would mention in my reviews, but it never used to be a dealbreaker for me. I didn’t mind so much if a pad hugged my ear skin a little.

Now that I’m trying to do a better job of not letting moisture and heat build up in there though, it was time to cull my collection and keep only those with enough room for my ears to float freely.

ZeosPantera has developed a good test called the three knuckle rule. He figures the width of three of his knuckles is about the height and depth of his ear, so if that part of his hand doesn’t fit nicely, it probably won’t be comfy on his ear.