The Reference Manual

The Reference Manual covers headphone design and building from first principles to finished, measured builds. It’s organized in six parts:

1. Fundamentals — how headphones actually work, and the vocabulary you need to reason about them.
2. Components & Materials — drivers, enclosures, pads, cables, and how to source them.
3. Design & Build — turning a design intent into a buildable plan, then building it.
4. Measurement & Tuning — verifying what you built and tuning it deliberately.
5. Advanced — deeper topics for second and third builds.
6. Special Topics — things that don’t fit the main path but matter.

Use the sidebar to browse. Each chapter notes its difficulty, what you should read first, and roughly how long it takes to read.

The manual is a work in progress — chapters are published here as they’re finished.