[Sceptre]

Hi Jermo,
Axel mentioned that burn in effect was 'noticeable' on the IE800 but was not 'measurable'. What is your view of burn in on the IE900 and has measurement tech managed to detect the differences that an ear can hear?
Regards
Sceptre

 

[warrenpchi]

Which tracks do you guys use for listening tests?

 

[Jermo K]

On my visits to Sennheiser's headquarters, there were measurements being done all over the place, some of which I'm not even allowed to discuss for reasons of confidentiality. Surely those play a role, don't they?

And just to revisit one part of my previous post: Can you give at least a general description of the tuning you were pursuing with the IE900, both generally and in comparison to one of its siblings like the IE300?

Sure, I forgot while I was writing.
For the tuning of the IE 900, we wanted to show off the benefits of our single dynamic driver technology, namely extension and great bass. So on the one hand you have a really carefully tuned bass that is really impactful in the lowest notes but never gets in the way of voices. On the treble, we purposefully slightly elevated the treble to showcase the smooth response thanks to the resonator chambers and our lowest in-class distortion. At Sennheiser, we strongly believe in the importance of space in the music for best immersion. This is a major challenge for in-ears, since the high occlusion automatically places sounds more in your head. We can alleviate that effect to a certain degree by lowering the presence region. We find that sound coming from inside your head adds to listening fatigue because it's unnatural. We know it's a choice that is debated a lot, and if you add a few dB to 3 kHz the IE 900 will still sound awesome, but overall we are certain that this adds substantially to the enjoyment and less fatigue during listening.

Compared to the IE 300, the IE 900 is a great example of progression within a portfolio. As short as possible: The IE 900 is a perfectly refined version of the IE 300. The IE 300 has bass that feels super punchy and fun, but can get a bit overboard on some music. On a similar note the treble is splashy and adds to the excitement, but it can be fatiguing on some music. The IE 900 refines both aspects to perfection and adds a more natural mid-range on top. It's really a coffin-earphone where you don't need anything else for the next 10 years.

 

[Hanesu]

The X3R technology is much more accurate in pinpointing resonance peaks, so the overall response is smoother. The newly integrated acoustic vortex also adds some "general smoothing" to the area between 6-10 kHz.
I'm strongly against the concept of target curves because I believe that every acoustic concept deserves a specific tuning. The occlusion effect (how closed off our ears are) has a big impact on how we perceive bass: An open headphone with flat bass may sound more impact-full than a BA earphone with a bass shelf. So alone the amount of occlusion (highest for BA earphones, lowest for HD 800 S) requires different considerations for tuning. Target curves are too simplistic to cover this complex behavior.

Apart from that, I talked with crinnacle, and I believe his in-ear target to be more tonally neutral than the Harman target.

Hi Jermo! Sorry for asking again, because I forgot to quote you. Could you please describe the tuning differences between IE800 (original), IE800s and IE900 from your point of view? Thank you so much!

 

[Jermo K]

Not related to IE900, but i'm curious if there are multi-BA or hybrid iems that sound engineers at Sennheiser really like, and don't find disjointed/unnatural?

One of the challenges during competitive research was that my acoustic engineer, Grit Bonin, is a woman with fairly small ears. As you know a lot of high-end in-ears are very bulky, so she had problems actually fitting them to have a good listen. I think the small size is one of the main advantages of our technology, and ergonomics are too little talked about in our community. Sure, exotic or a lot of drivers are interesting, but it's of no use if half of the population can't even use the product.

 

[Jermo K]

Hi there,

what are the main differences between IE900 and IE300? Is there a substantial difference in a driver itself, or is it mainly different shell material?

Hi there, the driver itself is fairly similar (more coil windings on the IE 900), but the acoustic back volume is different. On top of that, the integration of the acoustic vortex and the three resonator chambers in the nozzle make for a much more refined treble response. A major part is the way of production. For the IE 300 we build the transducers and ship them to our manufacturing partner for production, where they are assembled with only a single check on channel balance, because our machine is so good with consistency. You'll see that reflected in measurements online. For the IE 900 we use the intelligence of the assembly machine: We build a couple hundred transducers, and the machine automatically selects only transducers with impeccable distortion figures. Of those, it automatically selects pairs that will fit well together in their amplitude and distortion behaviour. Before full assembly into the housing, the earphones are checked again on a different coupler (because different couplers show different things). All in all, consistency is off the charts and we only use the best production slots of a machine that is already class-leading during normal production.

 

[Jermo K]

...and between the IE800S and IE900 if possible too please. I have both the IE800 and IE800S and do love them despite their wearability issues, but find them too warm especially when it comes to orchestral classical. I would love to have a more neutral rendition of the same expansive soundstage and detail...

Sure! The three main differences are: More natural mid-range, smoother but slightly more elevated treble and the bass is much better controlled, ie. still very hard hitting, but it doesn't congest voices. I'd say it's slightly closer to the IE 800, but it really does it's own thing. I suggest trying them out if you get the chance

 

[Jermo K]

Hi Jermo, thanks for being here today with the Q&A session, and thanks Jude for making it happen.

First of all the announcement of the IE900 is such a great surprise that hardly anyone here expected. I really love the way the metal shells are CNC-ed and all the technologies that were applied in this IEM.

My question is, based on the preliminary measurements the IE900 looks very similar to its predecessors (IE800 & IE800S). Is there any chance the driver used here is from the same family? We all know that dynamic drivers are very sensitive to the chamber it's being housed within and the IE900's resonance peaks are very similar (in terms of frequencies & amplitude) to that of the IE800(S).

I know the IE800(S) are brilliant IEMs so it makes sense to use the same great components. It's just the measurements are very interesting with all the similarities and so on.

For the IE 800 our developers were tasked to find the optimal driver size to be as small as possible (very important for ergonomics in earphones) while still delivering excellent sound. Excellent sound expressed in technical measurements are for example great extension beyond 10 kHz, extremely low distortion across the entire frequency band and high excursion for dynamic bass response. The diaphragm size they arrived was 7 mm, which was back then integrated in a manually assembled chassis. The new automatically assembled transducer offers much better distortion figures as well as best-in.class consistency across products as well as for channel balance for a precise soundstage. Some properties have been continued, but now we have a lot more freedom with tuning!

 

[Jermo K]

Hi Jermo,
Axel mentioned that burn in effect was 'noticeable' on the IE800 but was not 'measurable'. What is your view of burn in on the IE900 and has measurement tech managed to detect the differences that an ear can hear?
Regards
Sceptre

Interesting topic
The diaphragm changes its' character slightly as the plastics age. This is most noticeable when it comes off the transducer line, when it's still warm. When it's completely cooled down the measurement will be different as well. Beyond that point, we've chosen materials that are as robust as possible over a long product life. Excessive moisture, temperature variance (and I mean temperature swings that you may have in the Sahara ) as well as high mechanical strain (listening a lot at 120 dB) may still age the materials slightly, which will be measurable in the realm of up to ~1,5 dB variance.
These are really rare scenarios that will almost never happen and only over a long period of time. To me brain burn-in is much more significant, and I probably wouldn't notice the difference between a "burned-in" product versus a new one in a blind test.

 

[donthuang]

Hello Mr.Jerom,

Sorry for another question: why chose aluminum as IE900's shell material, not ceramic , stainless steel or titanium?

 

[bigbeans]

Hi, how do IE900 scale with amplification? For instance using something like Cayin C9 (or dedicated amplifier) vs a DAP?

 

[musicday]

How thick is the membrane and how fast does it move compared to electrostatic headphones? And what is magnet used in the IE900 and how powerful it is? Thank you for such fantastic innovation.

 

[Jermo K]

Hello Mr.Jerom,

Sorry for another question: why chose aluminum as IE900's shell material, not ceramic , stainless steel or titanium?

The housing itself doesn't have a major impact on sound since we do all of the tuning with the acoustic back volume as well as the nozzle with the resonator chambers. Since consistently excellent acoustic performance was the goal, we chose aluminium for the nozzle because it's one of the best materials to machine: The resonator chambers are extremely sensitive to even slight changes in the dimensions, which will change the frequencies they target. Using harder materials will make it impossible even for our highly advanced milling machine to produce at the tight specifications we have (the cutter will be abrased much more quickly for instance, which leads to a loss in accuracy). The earphone looks a lot more elegant with all components made from the same materials, so we chose aluminium for the housing as well.

 

[Jermo K]

Hi, how do IE900 scale with amplification? For instance using something like Cayin C9 (or dedicated amplifier) vs a DAP?

This is something very personal, so don't take my word as gospel. I think the IE 900 is extremely consistent throughout different sources, and therefore highlights potential shortcomings. Directly from a smartphone it makes compression artifacts from MP3 files more obvious and soundstage suffers. For higher-end amplification, I think the warm sound of the HDV 820 is a good match to the slightly accentuated treble. If you attach something very "cold", you'll get an HD 800 to go if you will. Overall the performance of the IE 900 stays the same regardless of output impedance of your source, so you have a lot of freedom even experimenting with tubes.

 

[Jermo K]

Which tracks do you guys use for listening tests?

That's personal for every acoustic engineer and critical listener involved in our development processes. I use different tracks for different purposes, and I always try to be able to A/B test with studio loudspeakers, which is something that is strangely rare in the community. Some qualities of headphones you can better appreciate when comparing with gear the mixing engineers used during production. For bass for example, I love Angel by Massive Attack. It's not necessarily about finding out that there is 3 dB too little at 40 Hz, but to get a feeling as close as possible to the loudspeaker. That's also much better to communicate to the acoustic engineer.
We've got many people with decades of critical listening experience, and they often paint a frequency response chart in their heads while listening to music. But sometimes you have effects in the time domain that are interpreted as a feature in the frequency response, such as a bass tube introducing a slower bass perceived as a 120 Hz bump, or a diaphragm with crazy mechanical dampening may be perceived as having less treble. I'm a big fan of just saying what difference you hear blindly and trying to connect it with various measurements afterward.

Back to your question, I'm a lifelong fan of Michael Jackson, so often it's just listening to songs I've listened a hundred times to and see if they feel right