[Sound Eq]

I saw some people talking bout synergy between amps, daps, high gain and low gain with iems, some mentioned that choosing an amp can affect certain properties of the sound signature, like for example flapy bass when choosing a wrong amp with the wrong or improper power to drive an iem. 
 
I am not asking bout driving capabilities, I am asking about affecting parts of the sound signature in bad way
 
for example in one of the videos currawong mentioned that a certain amp caused flappy bass in the signature of the iem due to miss match in synergy

 

[icebear]

  greetings
 
i want to learn new things, and i look for a simple explanation of what is negative effect of using an amp that is powerful on iems, would that affect sound quality of the iem
 
i saw some posts describing flappy bass due to using the wrong amp as its too powerful and other effects like make it more sibilant
 
i am totally noob in understanding power of an amp or dap and how it is expected to suit an iem
 
thanks

A noob with 5k posts ?

Anyway every amp has a volume control. Usually you start at zero and slowly increase the volume until it sound good and loud enough for you. At this point you will never be at the max. power rating of the amp e.g. 2x100 W into 8ohms. If you crank up a powerful amp that is able to deliver more power than the speaker/headphone/iem can handle you will  reach noticeable distortion level and then silence because the drivers are shot ... but most likely you ears as well

 

[SHAMuuu]

Headphone Supremus Trollus lol

Jk

 

[castleofargh]

power in itself doesn't matter, because you're not going to use too much power without going too loud.
what stops me from going for too powerful an amp is more a matter of logic. a guy won't design a 20W amp to drive 16ohm IEMs because it doesn't make sense. so such amp will most likely be focused more on doing well with low sensitivity headphones. maybe the impedance won't be very low because it's not expecting to drive IEMs at all. maybe the volume knob will be set in a way where with an IEM you have to tweak to find the right loudness within 2° of rotation because above is already too loud. depending on the type of volume knob, there is a far greater chance of channel imbalance at low levels. an amp with more gain is also more likely to have more noise, if an IEM is very sensitive, it's likely to pick up that noise and make it audible.
 
none of those things are a sure thing, and some amps will be just fine, but they're all possible scenarios.

 

[YUIOP10]

  greetings
 
i want to learn new things, and i look for a simple explanation of what is negative effect of using an amp that is powerful on iems, would that affect sound quality of the iem
 
i saw some posts describing flappy bass due to using the wrong amp as its too powerful and other effects like make it more sibilant
 
i am totally noob in understanding power of an amp or dap and how it is expected to suit an iem
 
thanks

I thought I was a noob, but this guy has 5k posts and still is one..

 

[Sound Eq]

all responses who started ridiculing  the post, I understand why it came across like this, but i edited the post to the point i wanted to ask, as when i wrote the earlier post I was tired.
 
I appreciate answers instead of ridicules, and I will report any posts that are just for trolling

 

[VNandor]

So you ask how an amp can affect the sound in a bad way? A couple of things I can think about are high noise floor, poor damping factor, high THD, too much/little power... these can all affect your listening in a negative way.

 

[watchnerd]

  all responses who started ridiculing  the post, I understand why it came across like this, but i edited the post to the point i wanted to ask, as when i wrote the earlier post I was tired.
 
I appreciate answers instead of ridicules, and I will report any posts that are just for trolling

 
Damping factor measures how much an amplifier allows a driver to "flop around".  The audible impact varies depending on the transducer.
 
I could write more, but you can just read about it here:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_factor

 

[castleofargh]

specifically for whatever low freq impact is mentioned ... somewhere... about an amp "too" powerful, the first bet would be impedance matching instead of power like suggested above. the IEM could simply have a non flat impedance response over frequencies and any amp without a very low impedance will turn those variations into frequency response variations.
but I insist, this has most likely nothing to do with power.

 

[Sound Eq]

  specifically for whatever low freq impact is mentioned ... somewhere... about an amp "too" powerful, the first bet would be impedance matching instead of power like suggested above. the IEM could simply have a non flat impedance response over frequencies and any amp without a very low impedance will turn those variations into frequency response variations.
but I insist, this has most likely nothing to do with power.

so when choosing a dap or amp, how can i determine if they suit together, sorry to keep asking

 

[castleofargh]

ideally with measurements of the amp into the same kind of load (for example a 16ohm resistor to see if an IEM that goes as low as 16ohm would be fine at the desired loudness).
and in general, low impedance amps/DAPs are a good idea anyway because keeping a damping ratio of 1/10 or better is the most obvious way to be sure the IEM's FR will not deviate much from how it was tuned. you ca also turn that reasonning around and avoid buying low impedance IEMs and IEMs without a flat impedance response, but usually I'll assume you find an IEM you like and only then try to get the right source.
if you do use low impedance IEMs, and fear low end roll off, stay clear from amps with protective caps. but again that would show when measured into a low impedance resistor. so measurements we can trust and learning how to interpret them is the right method IMO.
 
in some situations the crosstalk value could become really high into low impedance IEMs for some DAPs, the value in specs is usually unloaded and way better than what you'll get into your IEMs. most of the time I'd say that crosstalk values do not matter because it's not noticeable unless extremely bad(like -40db or louder for me), but some DAPs and very bad amps do end up at such bad levels that it's noticeable with some really low impedance IEMs. that could impact the headstage making everything slightly more toward mono(some will actually like that but that's a subjective matter).
 
a good damping ratio alone minimizes the chances to get in trouble/alter the original tuning of the IEM.
 I've decided that I would not buy a multidriver IEMs without seeing a few graphs first. also I don't like huge IEMs, so many hype trains have left without me in the last few years.
 
beyond that, it's objective fidelity or subjective preferences. while it's a rare occurrence, I've had a few IEMs where I enjoyed using a higher impedance amp because I liked the modified signature. but for that too, the right measurements can give a good idea of what to expect.

 

[VNandor]

You need to look at your headphone's specs first, sensitivity and impedance in particular. Let's say you have a headphone, its impedance is 32 ohms and its sensitivity is 105dB/mW. That means if you had an amplifier that has a maximum output power of 1mW into 32 ohm it would make your phones to sound 105dB SPL loud.
 
Something to note here: if you double the input power, it will make the phones to sound 3 dB louder so if you wanted your headphones to be let's say 120dB SPL loud you would need an amplifier that could output 5mW of power into 32 ohm.
 
You want to make sure the amp's output impedance is significantly lower than the impedance of your headphones. People usually say that amp's output impedance should be lower than the eighth of your headphone's impedance, but of course, the lower, the better.
 
You also need to look at the amplifier's distortion characteristics such as the frequency response, total harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion.
The frequency response is straightforward, you want it to be flat. The THD and IMD can be given in numerous ways. You want those figures to be below the threshold of audibility ( I don't know what's considered to be below the threshold and it varies from person to person that's why I'm usinga vague term here).
 
For example this is how fiio gives you the thd figures of their amps: ≥ 70 mW (32 Ω/THD+N＜1%) This means that if you feed 70mW of power into 32 ohm the total harmonic distortion (+noise in this case) will stay below 1% across the frequencies.
 
There are more things to consider and I realize I simplify some things but I guess this is a good starting point. By the way, this is only the case if you don't want to color the sound of your headphones. For example, if you think your headphones have too much treble, then an amplifier that rolls off highs may sound better than a flat one. If you enjoy the sound of harmonic distortion, you don't want it to be so low you don't notice it.
I personally prefer to change the sound of my headphones with DSP, not with amps/dacs/cables etc.
 
EDIT: I almost forgot, the easy way is to listen to the pairing and see if you like it. If you are, then you are good to go.

 

  so when choosing a dap or amp, how can i determine if they suit together, sorry to keep asking

 

[Sound Eq]

thank you all for this great explanation, as that is what I wanted to learn about