Things I just don't understand...

So OK, I know sometimes I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I really hate when I feel that my nose is being rubbed into that fact.

First some background.

After Connie goes to bed, often I will be up much later, either playing a game, or perhaps watching YouTube videos of something of interest I find there. After I do my normal chores on the websites, of course. So instead of cranking up the speakers on my PC, of course I want to use headphones to keep from disturbing Connie in the next room. Well, headphones don't last forever. Not that the actual hardware goes bad (well I did have some plastic fall off of my V-moda headphones and the company would not sell me replacement parts) but what usually happens is that the foam sound insulation in the earmuff parts get old and start disintegrating. Or, as is the case with the V-moda, the leather covering over the foam is having the black coating sloughing off. So usually when I close things down to go to bed, I will go into the bathroom, look in the mirror to make sure I am still me, and see all sorts of black flakes all over my ears and sides of my head. At first that freaked me out because I thought I had been severely infested with ticks. Lord knows I find enough of them as it is after working outside, so it wouldn't have really surprised me too much.

Yeah, I guess I could try to replace those foams, but I figure that if the earphones are old enough for the foams to start deteriorating, then perhaps the speakers themselves are getting past their prime too. And surely V-moda wouldn't sell replacement pads anyway. They just want you to buy a new pair of headphones from them, from what I gathered is their policy.

So, time to look for new headphones.

Well, maybe the options I see now have been around for a long time and I just never noticed or paid attention to them, but I found there are a few camps for headphones now. Earbuds are out, simply because I just don't want to be sticking things into my ears. So "over the ears style" is what I want. But there are two choices there: "Open back", and "closed back". So I had to figure out what that meant. It sounds like it should be obvious, but they COULDN'T mean what I think "open back" means, could it?

Yep, sure does. Apparently "open back" earphones will project what you are hearing with your ears, outwards into the room around you for the rest of the world close enough to hear also. So this is when I started feeling stupid. Why in the world would anyone mount headphones on their head to listen to something instead of just using regular speakers if the results to anyone else within listening distance will be the same? Had I bought these things and started using them late one night while playing a game, how long before Connie would come into the den and tap me on the head about the explosions that rocked her out of bed? I probably wouldn't have realized what was going on.

Isn't the whole idea of using headphones to isolate your ears from outside audible influences as well as insulating others from what you want to listen to? Maybe there is some exotic audiophile reasoning for "open back" headphones that I just cannot fathom, because I sure cannot think of one. Is the quality of the sound better? Well, why don't you buy better speakers then? Could 7.1 audio via headphones be better than 7.1 audio from actual decent speakers be better?

So if this is actually explainable, can someone explain this to me, please?