Balanced armature vs dynamic - Page 3

hahah, but no matter what, image x10 is awesome, I rank it second best on my list next to W3 ^ ^

What is it make you rank the W3 higher?thanks

otto

which ue iem are you mentioning?

super fi. 5 eb is what he is referring to

Super fi 5 eb is HUGE, never fit into human ears.
I believe ue had a 1 dynamic+ 1 BA driver IEM produced before Super fi 5 EB. But I forgot what it actually was..

There is Sony EX700 in the high end IEM range which utilize the Biggest dynamic IEM driver in the world. But from auditioning, It's hard to say it is very good.

BA is more advanced indeed

Extend and more balanced treble, better sound stage, more definite bass with well recorded songs and more detailed. its a SQ improvement overall~
However, that's only when I listen carefully with well recorded musics, for casual listening, such as in the gym, I wont notice much differences and they will both impress me.

Oh God why are people arguing about this.

Whether it be Technology A or Technology B, whichever performs better or suits your taste. It's like an ATI vs. nVidia war when people argue about armature and dynamic drivers.

haha, just let people argue man, Im learning more things whilst people arguing ^ ^ more interested in reading posts than Wikipedia...

Wikipedia is your friend.

Oh yeah definitely...but Headfi.org too~ ^ ^

I can attest to the Sleeks being a piece of masterful engineering...

I've been immersed in Live Sound since age 16 (now 30), and the Sleek SA-6 is the best Single Balanced Armature Driver IEM I own, it shares the top 3 with itself, the Phonak Audeo Perfect Fit Earphone (PFE), which is also a Single Balanced Armature Driver IEM which is mellower but way hmmm different... and the JVC HA-FX300 Bi-Metal (I'm sure this will be dropped a notch when I receive the Victor HP-FX500 Wood Dome Bi-Metal Diaphragm Dynamic Driver IEM) Dynamic Diaphragm Driver IEM.

Moutful, eh?

So yes, I've got too many IEMs as you can see by my signature, and one pair of Grado SR-60 Prestige Series Can.

I know my treble and my bass, and I can tell you, the Sleek Audio SA-6 is special in that it has remarkably well engineered midrange resolution with expandable and collapsable (ie. tunable) treble and bass spectrums via treble stems and bass port caps. Thats the beauty of the VQ system, for those of you unfamilar with it, and the SA-6 system from Sleek Audio.

Compared to the Phonak Audeo PFE, which has a more "elastic" // elstomimeric sound and very CLEAR sound renditon with just enough bass reality to not scare away a bass head, who can turn down the treble with a bass black passive filter, you have a distinctly different audio renditon "Concept".

Then compare that against the JVC Bi-Metal HA-FX300 with it's Metal Evaporation Diaphragm isolated by a sandwich in brass ring. The bass layering on these things bowls over EVERYTHING I've ever heard before, sorry v-moda bass freq, u know i luv u, but move over...

Compare those to the Victor Wooden HP-FX500 which are the first IEM wooden diaphragm with a gel vibration isolation ring and an overall structure very similar to the JVC Bi-Metal series, just a notch , nay, cutting, above the rest?? punny... Anypoo, The Victor Wooden has been noted to knock over the Sennheiser IE8's bass massiveness, and trounce the layering and roundness of the other IEM's out there; with the HUGE grille port on the backs of these IEMs I'm not surprised. They're quite a TON larger than the pencil lead sized ports on the HA-FX300 Bi-Metal series IEM... Night and Day

Anyway, I'm the lucky buyer of an eBay auction from Japan, from a reputable store with a 98% satisfaction rating, so I should recieve them as soon as is humanly probable, and be able to confirm reports, and more importantly... pair them off against my arsenal of IEMs and draw comparisons between the JVC and Victor IEMs.


These kinds of competition are excellent for us, the end user, of high-end audio gear, and for they, the manufacturers and boutique houses of high-end audio gear. It keeps things fresh, keeps Research & Development pouring into the field (wake up etymotic!), thanks Klipsch for making a break for the bass, but where did you forget your mids? (at least from all reports, I'll still wait till you decide to get reasonably priced...) So lets support our favourite boutiques & manufacturers!!

Dynamics have one MAJOR advantage over BAs , they are not sensitive to source impedance , there frequency response is mostly unaffected by it.
You have to be careful with BAs as the frequency response can change depending on source.

Are the UE Super.fi.5 EB the only ones that have 1 BA+1 Dynamic?

The wiki article that was linked made it sound like there were a few out there. It sounds so intriguing.

What does the size of the driver (dynamic) have to do with the sound? I ask because I'm so curious about the AT CKS70 which supposedly have a fairly large dynamic driver. The bass is supposed to be fantastic with a good soundstage, and the spcs that were posted in a review said that the driver was larger than the IE8s. So, I was curious as to what kind of effect the driver size has.

How would you compare these to the Image S4's? I just picked up a pair, and I'm just curious.

Quite contrare my dear friend, Dynamics are very sensitive to source impedance as they have wide ranging impedance of thier own caused by the combination of back electromotive force & resonances of the driver assembly as they interact with the magnet assembly. These effects are quite pronounced in dynamic drivers. In headphones though some of this is reduced by physical damping applied to the back side of the driver frame, but not all is removed. Balanced armatures are less sensitive to these effects & have only minor shifts in frequency response providing of coarse you are talking of only a single driver unit. Once you start adding drivers & thier associated passive crossovers all bets are off & the single dynamic driver will win. The problem being the crossovers, not the drivers. The same applies though of coarse to multi driver dynamics though if crossovers are involved.

If you ever built speakers & have had experience with various types of amps (transister, tube & various hybrids configurations) like I have you would know this.

I have some ER4Ps with the P to S converter (basically adds 75 ohms to the source impedance) & there is only a very small change in real sound. Slightly less pronounced lower mids & midbass with the converter. Only about 2 db. Barely noticable & these are balanced armatures. The source impedance with the converter is 3 times the impedance of the driver itself. With that kind of difference in source impedance you would expect a bigger difference if what you said is true.