[scannon18]

Well, at least I'm looking for someone who knows  what they're talking about to explain this:
 
The Triple fi 10s, from Ultimate Ears, have 3 armature drivers.
 
The Klipsch X-10 has 1.
 
How can these two headphones even compete, when one has three separate drivers and the other only has one?  Can a well made single armature driver be better than three separate drivers?
 
I do not mean to imply that the X-10 is better than the Triplefi 10s, or vice versa.  I've never heard either.  But on Amazon then are around the same price.  Would I be making an economic mistake to by a single-armature drive for the price of a triple armature driver?
 
What are the benefits of more drivers?  It gives the driver less to do, since the wave-production can be split amongst several drivers? Quicker response, better bass, mids, treble?  I remember the first time I plugged in my 2.1 system it was weird getting used to a separate woofer.  Till then I had really only listened to single-driver headphones.
 

 

[MrGreen]

The idea of a multiple driver system is to have several systems outputting lower volume (which adds via constructive interferance) to produce the same sound with lower Total Harmonic Distortion. Example: You have a single system outputting 300 and it's THD is "12". That's 4%.   Now suppose oyu had three systems outputting 100 each, and their THD was 3 each. The total output of the system would be 300 and 9 for THD, which is only 3%. Of course it's much more complicated than this, but you get the idea. Don't worry too much about "how do single drivers compete", just remember that they do. Commenting as to why would probably result in slander against particular groups of individuals who wish to sell via the "bigger is better" idiom. Suffice it to say that one quality driver with a total cost is better than 13 drivers that total the same amount (eg. one $26 dollar driver is better than 2 $13 drivers).
 
I've tried to keep it simple.
 
 
 

 

[Confispect]

Basically there's about 18 drivers at any given time in all 2010 phones. Superb....

 

[scannon18]

 
Quote:

The idea of a multiple driver system is to have several systems outputting lower volume (which adds via constructive interferance) to produce the same sound with lower Total Harmonic Distortion. Example: You have a single system outputting 300 and it's THD is "12". That's 4%.   Now suppose oyu had three systems outputting 100 each, and their THD was 3 each. The total output of the system would be 300 and 9 for THD, which is only 3%. Of course it's much more complicated than this, but you get the idea. Don't worry too much about "how do single drivers compete", just remember that they do. Commenting as to why would probably result in slander against particular groups of individuals who wish to sell via the "bigger is better" idiom. Suffice it to say that one quality driver with a total cost is better than 13 drivers that total the same amount (eg. one $26 dollar driver is better than 2 $13 drivers).
 
I've tried to keep it simple.
 
 
 

Thanks, this is exactly what I needed to read.  I've been eyeing the X10 but wondered "why not have three drivers, or four at that price?"
But this makes sense. 

 

[MrGreen]

I forgot to mention in my post that distortion becomes worse as you stress the drivers (i.e. make them play louder noises). The benefits of multiple drivers arguably comes in very high into the price range (Eg. JH13 area), because of diminishing returns on a driver.

 

[Confispect]

Quote:

I forgot to mention in my post that distortion becomes worse as you stress the drivers (i.e. make them play louder noises). The benefits of multiple drivers arguably comes in very high into the price range (Eg. JH13 area), because of diminishing returns on a driver.

Interesting now this I did not know...honestly. 

 

[MrGreen]

Lol, talk about incomplete posts. I also should have mentioned that they regularly use cross-over designs to "flatten out" the frequency resposne, by having drivers dedicated to bass, mids and treble performance. This IMO is debatable in the case of canalphones because of canals like the ER4 and the CK10.

 

[scannon18]

It seems like a multiple driver IEM would have better dynamic range than a single driver, but I suppose a well-designed single driver could outperform a multiple-driver iem in that situation as well.  But at loud volumes, a multiple-driver iem could conceivably be better because of lower distortion attributed to volume from any single driver?
 
So my guess is that the X10 driver is very well made, has very low THD, and can compete with multiple-driver iems in its price range.   I can't stop drooling over those things.

 

[xnor]

Headphones usually have very low THD. I'm no in-ear expert, but some of these tiny drivers seem to have problems covering the entire audible frequency range with a satisfactory frequency response.
 
Nevertheless, multi-driver means crossovers which also are not distortion free and in some headphones are the reason for crazy impedance curves (e.g. with dips down to 8 ohms) which can be problematic too.

 

[scannon18]

Quote:

Headphones usually have very low THD. I'm no in-ear expert, but some of these tiny drivers seem to have problems covering the entire audible frequency range with a satisfactory frequency response.
 
Nevertheless, multi-driver means crossovers which also are not distortion free and in some headphones are the reason for crazy impedance curves (e.g. with dips down to 8 ohms) which can be problematic too.

Wow, once again I've underestimated the complexity of the issue.  I guess that a multi-driver iem would be at the mercy of its crossover units. 

 

[m.hamner]

that was a great read. I just ordered the Jh-16's because I just assumed sound across multiple drivers carrying less load would be dynamically more inclined. But, it all depends on the crossover and the quality of the driver.