how to test headphones power handling?

[Zerox Millienium]

Hello guys please anyone here knows how to test the power handling of a full size headphones?

 

[castleofargh]

Power handling means sending energy until it breaks the driver. It’s best left to manufacturers who won’t cry after destroying a few pairs in the process.
My personal opinion is that you don’t need such a value for headphones(as a consumer!). Because headphones are always going to reach dangerous levels for your ears before it gets dangerous for the drivers. So just care about preserving your ears and it should be enough to also avoid melting a coil or blowing up a membrane on your headphone.

And while a headphone that breaks/melts before getting real loud could exist in principle, such a headphone wouldn’t be commercially viable with all the people breaking them while having a little too much fun.

Here is also the problem of impedance. While we all expect speakers to often sit tightly somewhere between 4 and 8ohm, a headphone’s impedance can go from 10ohm to over 600ohm. That makes a power value particularly unintuitive to use.


Anyway, about how it’s done, different brands will use different methods, but for speakers I think it should be about measuring the voltage(peak and/or RMS) and turning up a powerful amp while playing a signal(1kHz tone?), until the driver dies. Then from P=V^2/R you find out the equivalent power value.
There are various measurements and ways to express them, maybe that’s what you wanted to know about? But remember that it would mean many pairs of broken headphones by the end of it all.

 

[Zerox Millienium]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rick, you've provided all the information i was looking for, i really appreciate your time.

 

[sander99]

My personal opinion is that you don’t need such a value for headphones(as a consumer!). Because headphones are always going to reach dangerous levels for your ears before it gets dangerous for the drivers. So just care about preserving your ears and it should be enough to also avoid melting a coil or blowing up a membrane on your headphone.

I think it could be an issue for example if you try to eq up the lower bass of a bass light headphone.
(In fact I think I damaged my AKG 240 that way when I was very young and very stupid, lifting the 16(!) and 32 hz sliders of my graphic eq to +12 dB. It didn't melt down but it now resonates at certain bass frequencies.)

 

[castleofargh]

I think it could be an issue for example if you try to eq up the lower bass of a bass light headphone.
(In fact I think I damaged my AKG 240 that way when I was very young and very stupid, lifting the 16(!) and 32 hz sliders of my graphic eq to +12 dB. It didn't melt down but it now resonates at certain bass frequencies.)

I’ve killed a cheap earbud(lucky!) doing step response measurements in REW. The settings aallowed for pauses between frequencies, but wanting to measure several IEMs and be done fast, I didn’t redo the level calibration(stupid) and removed the pauses that let the coil cool down(well done Einstein). With the result I deserved.