I was just wondering if anyone has ditched over ear headphones completely and gone for high end IEM's instead?
 
I am getting a bit tired of full size headphones because they all have at least one "dealbreaker" such as too bright, not enough bass, poor build quality etc. Until you are spending £400 on some HifiMan HE-400 or maybe £900 on some LCD-2 it just seems that all headphones have a major flaw which makes them unsuitable for me. Although maybe the new Denon line will fix this with a pair of good all rounder headphones for under £300.
 
IEM's however you can get a variety of excellent all rounders with no major flaws for anything from £50-£300... Has anyone completely ditched over ear headphones and gone for IEM's for home and portable use?

In my case...
 
I am old enough to remember a time without IEMs.
 
I know, I know, it's just like LP Records vs Cds.
 
My kids say you are sooooooo old.
 
But, I do like my IEMs more now than Over the ear headphones.
 
Jim

Ive moved over completely to IEMs due to portability.  I have the JH-16 and love it, but still think about getting a fullsize every once in a while.  I usually cave and get one just to find I'm not using it and sell it off soon after however.

half half and depends on the mood/music. for rock, nothing beats my Grado SR225i. i love classical and opera with my UM custom and i love the headshaking bass presented by the PFE232.

After going through multiple over ear headphones I started researching IEM's more and it does seem like you can get a lot better SQ per £££....
 
Maybe the new Denon line of over ears will change my opinion but if they are no good then I think I will just be getting a high end pair of IEM's...
 
I prefer the comfort of over ears but you seem to get a lot more sound quality from IEM's in a similar price bracket whereas over ears you are always making compromises unless you have loads of money to spend such as £400 or more on some orthodynamics.

I've thought about this recently.  I'm pretty much a novice to higher quality gear and my transition to better earphones corresponds to my transition to IEMs.  I've never had a full size set that comes close to any of the IEMs I've owned the past few years.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing anything but I can't imagine replace my W2s right now and nothing is as portable as IEMs.

Still going for the IEM.

Philosophical reasons. I don't like the reductionism of headphones to a mere function. For me speakers, headphones, they are all limited in how well they can reproduce music, but they become more limited as they get smaller. For me headphones and IEMs are more the result of a desire to increase practicality of use than increasing sound quality (but more so ecology of sound reproduction, type of sound quality). I think the smaller the diaphragm gets the lesser becomes his potential for accurate and ecological reproduction of sound. For sound quality to be optimal, you need an ecological system for what you want to reproduce. You want a sound element that mimics the characteristics of instruments to be reproduced, as long as you can't have robots to play the instruments to reproduce a live or studio performance by an artist, whenever you ask for it, you need a driver that gets close to that [a robot playing of a musical instrument].
 
I think it's a very primitive yet fundamental and very raw principle [or a "philosophy" of mine; let's call it this way in case I end up being wrong, lol]: to reproduce music you need to get something that's similar to the initial musical instrument that does the music in question (like I said, ideally a robot to play the song on the instrument in a perfect manner; I like to repeat)... you will get the best ecology of reproduction this way. Basically, a good start is to make a driver that's roughly the size of the instrument you want to reproduce, and ideally (though we can't do it yet) that pushes sounds, not only as a 2D screen (wave fronts), but holographically, as a punctual and tridimensional dot/point in space (wave spheres)... just like when you shake a maracas; the sound isn't directional. It depends on the instrument of course, electric guitars (amplified by an amplifier/speaker) will remain 2D as long as we don't have holographical speakers to make them 3D; differently so, an acoustic guitar strum can be heard from behind in an open space, because the resonance chamber is fairly 3D though the sound comes predominantly in the front of the player; this is actually quite close to a real enclosed-in-wood-cabinet speaker driver works...
 
I haven't evaluated the pluses and the minuses of things such as room aberration (and placement), having multiple drivers vs. only one, what technology to use for them (static vs. dynamic), but I know for sure that miniaturizing the diaphragms can't help the music. Yes IEMs, it's a nice way to control just about everything of a sound (by multiplying the drivers, controlling acoustics properties of the chamber like never before) and give a good render of the music, with great results and sound quality, but like every headphones and speakers, they will never "feel" like a symphonic orchestra -- as long as they aren't the size of a symphonic orchestra, the number of people playing in it, and all of their instrument... -- as long as they aren't the symphonic orchestra.
 
Headphones are not the size of any musical instrument to start off with, so they simply got to be more jinxed than speakers (which are roughly the size of many musical instruments) for ecological reproduction of sound; IEMs, with their ridiculously small drivers, are even more jinxed. They are a cool monitoring tool for musicians, personally I love how stealth and small they can be, how isolating, how portable, and how well adapted-to-your-ears cIEMs are.
 
I'm not sure which one I prefer. I don't like how intimately deep they penetrate an area of your body that is supposed to be free (to hear the environment and defend yourself from predators) and how sweaty and oily is my ears' physical reaction is, when trying to fight what they consider an invasion of a stranger body.
 
But one sure thing IEMs are a lot more perfect of an headphone (mini speakers) than fullsize cans, which they, it has been said, all come with their many drawbacks (so you really need to hunt hard for a pair you'll like, unlike say, cIEMs). But I like them because of their bigger drivers, and the way they look on you while wearing them. IEMs do not look as good IMO.
 
I don't really see the point in using cIEMs over a comfortable pair of fullsized when your sat down at home.
 
 
Sorry for getting all philosophical, I didn't reread much what I said so it has to be vague. But I'm in a tired state of mind right now, and thoughts flow a lot better than when you are rested. Having slept tonight I wouldn't have bothered formulating such complex opinions here; opinions that are probably too long to be read or worth your time anyway... I had fun writing them down, good night.

Quote:

devouringone3 said:

Philosophical reasons. I don't like the reductionism of headphones to a mere function. For me speakers, headphones, they are all limited in how well they can reproduce music, but they become more limited as they get smaller. For me headphones and IEMs are more the result of a desire to increase practicality of use than increasing sound quality (but more so ecology of sound reproduction, type of sound quality). I think the smaller the diaphragm gets the lesser becomes his potential for accurate and ecological reproduction of sound. For sound quality to be optimal, you need an ecological system for what you want to reproduce. You want a sound element that mimics the characteristics of instruments to be reproduced, as long as you can't have robots to play the instruments to reproduce a live or studio performance by an artist, whenever you ask for it, you need a driver that gets close to that [a robot playing of a musical instrument].
 
I think it's a very primitive yet fundamental/philosophical principle: to reproduce music you need to get something that's similar to the initial musical instrument that does the music in question (like I said, ideally a robot to play the song on the instrument in a perfect manner; I like to repeat)... you will get the best ecology of reproduction this way. Basically, a good start is to make a driver that's roughly the size of the instrument you want to reproduce, and ideally (though we can't do it yet) that pushes sounds, not only as a 2D screen (wave fronts), but holographically, as a punctual and tridimensional dot/point in space (wave spheres)... just like when you shake a maracas; the sound isn't directional. It depends on the instrument of course, electric guitars (amplified by an amplifier/speaker) will remain 2D as long as we don't have holographical speakers to make them 3D; differently so, an acoustic guitar strum can be heard from behind in an open space, because the resonance chamber is fairly 3D though the sound comes predominantly in the front of the player; this is actually quite close to a real enclosed-in-wood-cabinet speaker driver works...
 
I haven't evaluated the pluses and the minuses of things such as room aberration (and placement), having multiple drivers vs. only one, what technology to use for them (static vs. dynamic), but I know for sure that miniaturizing the diaphragms can't help the music. Yes IEMs, it's a nice way to control just about everything of a sound (by multiplying the drivers, controlling acoustics properties of the chamber like never before) and give a good render of the music, with great results and sound quality, but like every headphones and speakers, they will never "feel" like a symphonic orchestra -- as long as they aren't the size of a symphonic orchestra, the number of people playing in it, and all of their instrument... -- as long as they aren't the symphonic orchestra.
 
Headphones are not the size of any musical instrument to start off with, so they simply got to be more jinxed than speakers (which are roughly the size of many musical instruments) for ecological reproduction of sound; IEMs, with their ridiculously small drivers, are even more jinxed. They are a cool monitoring tool for musicians, personally I love how stealth and small they can be, how isolating, how portable, and how well adapted-to-your-ears cIEMs are.
 
I'm not sure which one I prefer. I don't like how intimately deep they penetrate an area of your body that is supposed to be free (to hear the environment and defend yourself from predators) and how sweaty and oily is my ears' physical reaction is, when trying to fight what they consider an invasion of a stranger body.
 
But one sure thing IEMs are a lot more perfect of an headphone (mini speakers) than fullsize cans, which they, it has been said, all come with their many drawbacks (so you really need to hunt hard for a pair you'll like, unlike say, cIEMs). But I like them because of their bigger drivers, and the way they look on you while wearing them. IEMs do not look as good IMO.
 
I don't really see the point in using cIEMs over a comfortable pair of fullsized when your sat down at home.
 
 
Sorry for getting all philosophical, I didn't reread much what I said so it has to be vague. But I'm in a tired state of mind right now, and thoughts flow a lot better than when you are rested. Having slept tonight I wouldn't have bothered formulating such complex opinions here; opinions that are probably too long to be read or worth your time anyway... I had fun writing them down, good night.

Click to expand...

 
so what do you prefer?

Oh yeah, that question.
...
Good question, I don't know. I used IEMs during the first half of my headphone-life, now I use FullSizes mostly, but I revert to IEMs when I need the good isolation, from times to times.
 
Grados are not hot at all, even during this hot season... comfort is a key element to enjoying a headphone

Really, the perfect sound driver only has to mimic the frequency response of your tympanic and basilar membranes. All sound waves that reach your eardrum via your pinna and canal are compressed into 2d waveforms, it is simply the action of your pinna that allows for spatial differentiation of a static sound source. In that sense, circumaural headphones and speakers will give you higher fidelity imaging, for they take the sound front (which transduced into 2 dimensions by the time it reaches the microphone) and replay it into your pinna, where the waveform is modified by the pinna to allow your brain to recognize the spatial effect. This is because sounds hitting different parts of your pinna will cause the initial waveform to change, and you subconsciously recognize that. IEM's on the other hand, bypass the pinna, and the frequency-modifying effects of the pinna, and thus will give you a smaller soundstage. But on the other hand, there are companies (like etymotic) that deliberately color their IEM's to mimic that of a waveform that has already hit the pinna. That's why I love my ER-4's. At the end of the day, you do not need a speaker to mimic the physical properties of the actual instrument, you just need one that will accurately drive the subsequent tympanic response. And from a practicality standpoint, IEM's are typically cheaper, smaller, more efficient, and more isolating than a comparable full sized pair of cans. Im more than happy to sacrifice a bit of soundstage for that.

Full size are awesome but you need the power to push them, if you don't have the power it won't sound that great.

Sent from my PH44100 using Tapatalk 2

Quote:

grapefruit said:

Really, the perfect sound driver only has to mimic the frequency response of your tympanic and basilar membranes. All sound waves that reach your eardrum via your pinna and canal are compressed into 2d waveforms, it is simply the action of your pinna that allows for spatial differentiation of a static sound source. In that sense, circumaural headphones and speakers will give you higher fidelity imaging, for they take the sound front (which transduced into 2 dimensions by the time it reaches the microphone) and replay it into your pinna, where the waveform is modified by the pinna to allow your brain to recognize the spatial effect. This is because sounds hitting different parts of your pinna will cause the initial waveform to change, and you subconsciously recognize that. IEM's on the other hand, bypass the pinna, and the frequency-modifying effects of the pinna, and thus will give you a smaller soundstage. But on the other hand, there are companies (like etymotic) that deliberately color their IEM's to mimic that of a waveform that has already hit the pinna. That's why I love my ER-4's. At the end of the day, you do not need a speaker to mimic the physical properties of the actual instrument, you just need one that will accurately drive the subsequent tympanic response. And from a practicality standpoint, IEM's are typically cheaper, smaller, more efficient, and more isolating than a comparable full sized pair of cans. Im more than happy to sacrifice a bit of soundstage for that.

Click to expand...

 
I was more referring to the size/scale and "shape" of a sound/instrument/performance than to its position in a room.
 
I think placement of the instruments, spatial representation of the music isn't "recorded" most of the times because microphones are placed too close to the instruments. A drum set as just as many mics as he has pieces, an electric guitar has mics at about 10 centimeters from the driver of its amplifier, a singer sings at less than arm distance from his mic in a studio, and about less than 5 centimeters from it when live, each musician of an orchestra has their own mic, etc. synthesizers' sound is already concealed to an electrical signal. I think soundstage as we talk about it, is a semblance of a real stage with instruments on it. Most of the time (unless you're listening to binaural recordings), the sensation of a live performance and instrument placement is an artifact (a product) created by the speakers/headphone, it's not there in the music (it's not a reproduction).
 
IEMs reproduce the music of a symphonic orchestra in all of its frequencies, produce a small soundstage, but they don't emulate very well the size/volume/amplitude of the sound of the orchestra itself. They give you a bit less of that bodily sensation than headphones, and less than speaker monitors, a lot less than full size speakers, etc.
 
I'm not sure I want to speak about the 2D vs. 3D analogy anymore, I'm probably wrong about it. Microphones certainly can record stereo image and reflection of sound in a room, but really all I meant by "ecological sound reproduction", is that the sound of a speaker is not the sound of a string that vibrates, because the speaker itself it not a string that vibrates. A speaker is a plastic cone, a tweeter or a "thin film" that tries to emulate the sound of a vibrating string. A certain timbre, a certain quality of the sound, is lost somewhere, but its fairly small I would guess.

Quote:

codefox said:

I've thought about this recently.  I'm pretty much a novice to higher quality gear and my transition to better earphones corresponds to my transition to IEMs.  I've never had a full size set that comes close to any of the IEMs I've owned the past few years.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing anything but I can't imagine replace my W2s right now and nothing is as portable as IEMs.

Click to expand...

 
I'm essentially in the same boat. Although when I'm not using IEM's I'm using my speaker setup instead of headphones. I like the portability of IEM's. I couldn't imagine using a giant set of cans whilst out and about. For that reason, I haven't really bothered to get over-ear headphones, because I feel that I wouldn't use them enough to justify the price.

For portable use, I had been using my Atrios exclusively...but since going with some Beyer DT1350s I've been pretty attached to them. I still get the Atrios into the rotation, but the Beyers are king. 
 
For home use it's Grados and T1s.