[pekingduck]

Would the attenuator change the FR of IEMs with very low impedance (< 16 ohm) ? 

 

[DJScope]

 
Hi,
 
Good point! Some background.
 
 
The nano iCAN has been out since December and so has the nano iDSD.
 
 
What we under-estimated is that there are a lot of customers out there who retain the use of their high-sensitivity IEMs. These were ones they originally purchased for their iPhone/iPad and when they buy a headphone amp, they still largely stick with the same IEMs.
 
 
Just as a very simple example, the iPhone outputs 15mW. Any aftermarket headphone amp such as the nano iCAN puts out 150mW. This is 10x the power.
 
 
This is kind of mis-match gives rise to audible "hiss" and a volume control that hardly makes it past 9 o' clock. This of course is the same case with just about every headphone amplifier out there.
 
 
Hiss & low Vol Control = less than ideal.
 

 
So when our customers enquired with us about the "hiss" and we looked into this more, we found many used high-sensitivity IEMs with the nano iDSD/iCAN.
 
 
Our retailers suggested aftermarket attenuators but they replied that they dont have a good experience of the change in sound quality.
 
 
Rather than politely ask the customer to buy an alternative IEM/headphone, we offered to make the iFi Attenuators for them to use.
 
So we made a few prototype iFI Attenuators.
 
Then a few of you kindly posted your reviews of them here on Head-Fi and then the thing took on a life of its own. And here we are now!

 
Huge props for listening to, and evolving with the community of your customers. Much respect for this kind of business model. I can see that you guys will go very far. Maybe you guys can eventually look into making you own catalogue of headphones. Have you ever considered that?

 

[snoopy511]

iMatch

iLevel

iLoud

iConnect

 

[Rzybon]

Ifi Ator or Attor as short for ATTenuatOR

 

[Makiah S]

Id like to say... thanks very much for listening to your user base! I had an issue with an over sensitive headphone my self as well
 
And I just wish this was out back when I had the amp as I liked how it sounded with the headphone, minus the annoying hiss
 
how bout iSynergy 

 

[iFi audio]

  Would the attenuator change the FR of IEMs with very low impedance (< 16 ohm) ?

Hi,
 
Thorsten asked us to let you know that:
 
"The attenuator output impedance is low (3R for 12dB and < 1R for 24dB), inmost cases any changes will be very small, however some small changes may be expected.
 
For an IEM that varies from12 Ohm minimum to 64 Ohm maximum (just made up numbers) the resultant frequency response variation would be less than +/- 0.75dB for the 12dB Attenuator and less than +/-0.25dB for the 24dB attenuator.
 
While not quite "zero", these are ultimately quite low figures."
 
thanks

 

[iFi audio]

 
 
Huge props for listening to, and evolving with the community of your customers. Much respect for this kind of business model. I can see that you guys will go very far. Maybe you guys can eventually look into making you own catalogue of headphones. Have you ever considered that?

Thanks to you and the OPs who are glad that we admit we learn something new everyday. We have to respond to market dynamics.
 
 
Headphones?
Sorry. Very unlikely - we do listen to/muck around internally with quite a few different headphones. We have zero plans to bring out an iFi headphone. We work too closely with some headphone manufacturers and we prefer not to tread on their toes.
 
iFi skunkworks
Plus, we have WAY too many other things coming through....cant let the cat outta the bag yet!
 
The micro iDSD on the HF Crowd-Design thread is the next one and after that we're going back in time...

 

[kogyst]

iWhisper
ClearWhisper
iHumming
ihumming-bird

 

[Makiah S]

 
Hi,
 
Thorsten asked us to let you know that:
 
"The attenuator output impedance is low (3R for 12dB and < 1R for 24dB), inmost cases any changes will be very small, however some small changes may be expected.
 
For an IEM that varies from12 Ohm minimum to 64 Ohm maximum (just made up numbers) the resultant frequency response variation would be less than +/- 0.75dB for the 12dB Attenuator and less than +/-0.25dB for the 24dB attenuator.
 
While not quite "zero", these are ultimately quite low figures."
 
thanks

.75 db in frequancy reponse isn't what I would call low... .25 on the other hand is
 
what about for those of us using full sized headphones at 32ohms? 

 

[eugenius]

iTRIM

 

[ClieOS]

Anything under 1dB is usually considered to be near imperceptible for most, I'll say that's a good number. The impedance is surprisingly low for sure, given 3 ohm is in the iPhone territory.

 

[pohoda]

i-deTNT
iCOX (1 and 2) like painkillers

 

[pohoda]

Or iCOX-12 and iCOX-24

 

[xanden]

iBliss 
iZen 

 

[iFi audio]

  .75 db in frequancy reponse isn't what I would call low... .25 on the other hand is

 
what about for those of us using full sized headphones at 32ohms?

Hi,
 
Well, low is relative. In this case it was relative to unavoidable tolerances in transducers like headphones and to the frequency response of a typical headphone.
 
e.g. look here:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-measurement-proceedures-frequency-response
 
As to your second question, the example given with 12 Ohm minimum impedance and 64 Ohm impedance peaks is pretty much "worst case". Anything with higher impedance will see less variation.
 
thanks