Audiophiles!Please help me solve this mystery.

I picked up my earphones this morning to listen to smooth jazz at work and noticed that one of the foam pads was missing. I gave up looking for it after half a minute. I then struggled to decide whether I should take the other one off to make it even. Well I decided to try it out with just the right pad on and see if it made a difference.

It got me thinking....

What is the purpose of using foam pads on headphones or earphones?

I've heard different reasons including better sound quality, comfort, and protection from direct sound that could damage your ear.

Some headphones use foam pads while others don't.

Does anyone know for sure??? I am a little concerned about any ear damage that may result from not using foam pads.

IMHO the only (main) reason for that is for comfort.

a very important factor with pads is to be able to listen to music for hours without feeling uncomfortable. however if the manufacture uses a low quality foams they will degrade the sound quality and block some of the audio spectrum. 

Ear damage? Absolutly not.

I was hoping to hear that for reassurance. I am going to try them with no foam pads

It all depends on if the pads are designed to cover the drivers. If they are then the chances are they are also passive filters as well as for comfort and to protect the drive units.

Take for example one of my headphones which are Beyerdynamic and Beyerdynamic tend to be on the brighter side of neutral, put it this way I would not want to listen to them without the foam pads / filters. They would be piercing and un-listenable.  

For sure.

in case of in-ear-phones, one more thing to consider is to protect the earphones from dirt.

It works like more of a cork, like that will prevent your brain from running out your ears

In that case I need extra foam padding on my earphones to prevent the loss of whatever brain I have left.