Yea I guess so, but from my cabling DIYing and rolling experience, thin wire like this are not good enough to "excit" the driver, especially buds. IEMs drivers don't response to the cable as much somehow for some reasons I do not know.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/earbuds-round-up.441400/post-17819488
You can see in the above link, cable 9, which is just as thin as the RW3000 cable and most stock cables that I own, suffers from the same problem and other cables don't. So statistically speaking, the thickness of the cable do matter, at least with the constant controlled output impedance of my Fiio M15s. I am sure it would sound different with other sources like a powerful desktop amp.
You can take a look at this lonely DIY cable thread if interested:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/diy-iem-headphone-cables.968497/page-6
Interesting that you find that. I am normally a fan of "thinner is better". As long as the cable impedance is fairly low (though some sets do better with higher impedance cables). I have only one or two 16 core cable, and quite a few 8 core cables, but I like the 4 core cables for earbuds. Just my thoughts on the subject.
The thickness of the cable isn't so much about the voltage, but more the current. If a cable is not sufficiently thick enough (overall) to get the current you need, you will know because it will get hot, or even burn the conductors up in the circuit. As for having enough power to excite the drivers, I think it will more than likely come down to the combination of impedance of your source output, cable, and drivers themselves. As for myself, I use DAPs that have less than 1ohm output impedance. This number is very important to me, as it does indeed change the sound quality (and not for the better) with higher impedance. The rule of thumb is 1/8th. Your output impedance should be not more than 1/8th of the driver impedance (and you should be adding the cable impedance to the source impedance to get that number).
For the best sound (and like they do with speaker systems), you should get as close to 1/8th as you can; not too much under, and not too much over. Also, known as matching the amplifier to the speakers.
BTW! Not trying to insult you if you know all of this already...
Oof, I just had the same reaction. Was about to jump in as a result of @mt877’s post and was looking at cheap soldering irons on Amazon…
Alright, I’m in… I’ve been thinking of getting into DIY, but a little intimidated by the idea of tuning, so this seems like a fun way to get into it.
I went with
this one, rather than get just a soldering iron. This way I also have the heat gun as well to do some floating, or even "degluing". It might be overkill for buds, but it is pretty much futureproof, and was pretty cheap considering all that you get. I have had this stuff for a few years now, and I have had 0 issues with any of it.
Also, I got
this for free when I ordered it. I went ahead and ordered
this, and
this as well so that I am set up to do any sort of small soldering I need to. I got all this to save a lot of money fixing my Nintendo Switch (tiny PCB ugh). The flux is not strictly necessary, but it helps spread the heat to where you want it without having to burn up everything else around it. And it works great for those times when you run into a job that has non led based solder (like in the olden days) because silver based solder is much harder to get to melting point. I recommend simply getting used to using it with every job because everybody uses silver solder nowadays (for health reasons).
The microscope also is not completely necessary, but if you are old like me and have failing eyesight, or want to also be able to work on PCB boards, it does become necessary. With buds, you can get away without it, but boy is convenient and worth it to me.
All things considered, and with what you get for the cost, this is (to me) a fantastic professional (like) setup without nearly the cost for the actual professional stuff. Again, just my $.02 on the subject.
It's awful in terms of output impedance (2.3 Ohm for balanced output and 1.4 Ohm for SE).
And yes, I also have got a feeling flathead buds are more sensitive to insufficiently small output impedance rather IEMs.
That is terribly high for a (contemporary) portable device.
I don't think they are any more or less sensitive to lower impedance than IEMs or headphones (this is shown in the impedance and sensitivity numbers). And having a really low output impedance just means there is a chance to have noise that is human hearable if you have a really sensitive and low impedance set. This is where the manufacturing comes in. If a maker does their work sufficiently for amplification, you will not have much or any noise or jitter with low impedance sets. This is also where stuff like THD and DNR come into play of the device. If these are too low, you will hear noise from a device that has a very low output impedance. I have an all BA set that has an impedance of 9ohms, and my DAP is .2 ouput impedance. I never hear unwanted noise because the amplification circuit has been done right, just as an example.
Others might even use their output impedance as a sort of noise filter to cover up that they used cheap parts, and it would "sound off" otherwise. Like if they used poor oscillation for clocks, thus giving a lot of jitter (for instance). Just some food for thought.
Edit: Must be having a brain-fart because I just noticed that you and I are basically saying the same thing... DOH! haha
This probably was in stock for ages. I only use Hiegi or K's foams, so there's no problem.
