Cleaning headphones is mostly a question of what not to let near them. Liquid finds the driver, solvents find the adhesive holding a mesh in place, and a seal that has hardened stops sealing — which quietly costs you both bass and noise cancelling long before anything looks wrong.
The guides here follow the maker's own instructions where those exist, and say so where they do not. Each names the materials involved, because a knit canopy, a protein-leather pad and a silicone tip do not tolerate the same treatment, and advice written for one of them ruins another.
Consumable parts get their own attention: which pads and tips are meant to be replaced rather than restored, how to tell when they are past saving, and what changes in the sound when they are.
Apple names two brands of micellar water, counts the strokes in seconds and sets a minimum drying time. The instruction covers the speaker meshes and stops there.
Apple, Logitech and Bose each publish pad-cleaning instructions keyed to a material, and the two makers contradict each other on disinfecting wipes. Not one of the 67 headphone cards collected here states what its pads are made of.
MicTested