mookid_
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2009
- Posts
- 23
- Likes
- 21
Quote:
This guy seems extremely passionate about how IEMs are better than full-size headphones and that headphone amplifiers are useless. Seems to go against everything I've ever read.... so are these valid points or is he full of it?
| What I'm talking about is cans sound worse than properly built Canalphones or IEMs. Reasons why: 1) Being on the outside of the ear, they never quite "sit" in the same place. Subtle movements of the tweeter cone relative to your ear have a dramatic effect on frequency response because your ear is biologically shaped to color sound drastically depending on where it hits the outer ear; it's how we localize sounds. the closer the speaker is to your eardrum, the purer and more reliable the sound will be. 2) there's less than an inch between where the speaker is relative to your eardrum in a can vs a canalphone or IEM, but that inch makes a world of difference in terms of amplifier output required to get the same SPL level. The sensitivity of cans is always worse, meaning there's a greater chance you're pushing your amp into a nonlinear range. 3) as above, that distance also affects part choice. Cans have to move a few inches of material in their speaker cones, and as such compromises have to be made. The smaller the speaker cone itself, the less mass there is and the easier it is to make it rigid, thus making it cheaper and easier for canalphone manufacturers (who only have to move about a cm diameter cone) to make wide-bandwidth, flatter-sounding drivers. 4) isolation is always better with canalphones because of how they work; better isolation means less external noise means better impression of the music. Good for the listening experience in the short run, and in the long run saves your ears quite a bit of damage from compensating for environmental noise. Anyone who thinks a headphone amp affects sound quality is not worth listening to. Amplifiers AMPLIFY. As long as the SNR is sufficiently low, and you don't push them outside their operational range, and the THD is less than .01% or so at 1kHz, they are transparent. |
This guy seems extremely passionate about how IEMs are better than full-size headphones and that headphone amplifiers are useless. Seems to go against everything I've ever read.... so are these valid points or is he full of it?
