[Mlaihk]

SE
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Ety-ER4S (Impedance 100ohms)
ATH-CM700Ti (open ear)
1More Quad Driver (impedance 30ohms)

BAL
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Logitech UE900s (30ohm)
Smabat ST-10s Gold (150 Ohm)
Dunu SA6 (60ohm)
ThieAudio Monarch MKII (36ohm)
Yincrow RW-3000 (16 ohm open ear)

Bro, I see most of your buds are higher impedance gears so probably w4 higher OI doesn't affect your gears as much. But I am curious if you head any difference with your RW-3000 particularly in the lower-end if you switch from BAL to SE or other even lower OI amps? Having said that open ear buds always has weaker low-end to me so probably won't matter much as well.....

 

[Mlaihk]

The higher OI on the W4 probably affected my gear collection a lot more than others. My IEMs are all campfire IEMs and their design is Crossover-Less, which means that the drivers are directly exposed to the OI of the amp. And lost of bass is way more noticeable in my Solaris Mercury as it has a DD where as my Andromedas are all pure BAs......

Just as a comparison:
W2 Balanced OI :0.73ohm
RU7 Balanced OI: 1ohm
W4 Balanced OI: >3ohm

Which makes W4 balanced very poor matching to Low impedance highly sensitive IEMs

 

[Ferdinando1968]

About source impedance effect on transducer frequency response..

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-discovery-thread.586909/post-17605220

 

[Neweymatt]

The higher OI on the W4 probably affected my gear collection a lot more than others. My IEMs are all campfire IEMs and their design is Crossover-Less, which means that the drivers are directly exposed to the OI of the amp. And lost of bass is way more noticeable in my Solaris Mercury as it has a DD where as my Andromedas are all pure BAs......

Just as a comparison:
W2 Balanced OI :0.73ohm
RU7 Balanced OI: 1ohm
W4 Balanced OI: >3ohm

Which makes W4 balanced very poor matching to Low impedance highly sensitive IEMs

While I agree that the higher OI of the W4 balanced diminished sub-bass response of Andro2020, I still thought it was perfectly acceptable, especially for a lighter, brighter sort of listen.

I don’t own a W4, but if I did I’d probably choose it from time to time with the Andro over the much lower OI RS6, depending on genre.

 

[BlueEmperor]

I use W2 and W4 only in BAL mode with all my IEMs and earbuds, and W4 performs better than W2. So not sure about "garbage" sentiment.

There are some measurements of W4, looks better than W2 in these tests too.

That's very nice; I'm happy for you, but none of this has anything to do with the poor damping factor resulting from the interplay of the high output impedance of W4 with low impedance IEMs.

Bass will be bad, an undeniable fact that anyone with good ears will notice; some members already did:

Somehow the 4.4BAL on the W4 is killing a lot of the bass on my IEMs

Worse than that, the frequency response as a whole could be affected, and impedance peaks of drivers could cause ringing.

Overall, IMO, an output impedance of 3 ohms in a dongle is unnaceptably bad in this day and age and also a big downgrade from W2. Try to compare W4 to W2 on Andromeda or any ~15 ohm IEM, and the sound quality difference should be easy to notice in favor of W2. Will sound great on higher impedance headphones, of course; I have no doubt.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

The higher OI on the W4 probably affected my gear collection a lot more than others. My IEMs are all campfire IEMs and their design is Crossover-Less, which means that the drivers are directly exposed to the OI of the amp. And lost of bass is way more noticeable in my Solaris Mercury as it has a DD where as my Andromedas are all pure BAs......

Just as a comparison:
W2 Balanced OI :0.73ohm
RU7 Balanced OI: 1ohm
W4 Balanced OI: >3ohm

Which makes W4 balanced very poor matching to Low impedance highly sensitive IEMs

Can you use SE, what is impedance here. Guess due to low impedance of your IEMs they don't needs lots of power either?

 

[Andrew_WOT]

That's very nice; I'm happy for you

No patronizing please, try to be nice. You generalized that it's garbage, I have different experience, that's what I've shared. Do you even own W4?

 

[Andrew_WOT]

But I am curious if you head any difference with your RW-3000 particularly in the lower-end if you switch from BAL to SE or other even lower OI amps?

Just spent some time switching between BAL and SE with 16Ohm Yincrow RW-3000 using some bass heavy track from Boris Brecha, focusing specifically on low region.
Honestly besides obvious volume difference that requires some matching after switching, bass quantity was the same to my ears. In BAL though I got better separation, more 3D effect, and a pinch more details. Both modes sound great with better control in BAL.
May be the impedance of those is not low enough to show the problem.

 

[Mlaihk]

Can you use SE, what is impedance here. Guess due to low impedance of your IEMs they don't needs lots of power either?

You are correct. My IEM sounds a lot better on the SE on the W4. Maybe slightly better than W2 (comparing both in SE) in treble with a more controlled bass. But differences are very subtle. But as you mentioned, using balanced connection does result in better imaging (even in W2) and with the W2, I can use 4.4 balanced with no loss of the power in the low-end.....

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Wondering if W4EX has different OI in BAL, it's not as powerful as W4.

 

[ClieOS]

Bro, I see most of your buds are higher impedance gears so probably w4 higher OI doesn't affect your gears as much. But I am curious if you head any difference with your RW-3000 particularly in the lower-end if you switch from BAL to SE or other even lower OI amps? Having said that open ear buds always has weaker low-end to me so probably won't matter much as well.....

RW-3000 is single dynamic. As with most dynamic drivers, their impedance curve is almost always flat from 20Hz to 20kHz and thus doesn't affected by the source's output impedance much.

---

I think there might be some over-blown assumption that 3 ohms output impedance is like the end of the world. It really isn't. Sure it will be better if it is sub-1 ohms, but 3 ohms for the most part are perfectly acceptable IMO. On the other hand, I think questions can be asked for those IEM manufacturers that think 10 ohm or so impedance is a good idea for IEM - it is not, and never has been. It is fully avoidable when designing the crossover circuit but IEM makers are too lazy to do the proper engineering. Yet somehow it becomes more of the fault for amp/source manufacturer not to match. Of course, there are other factors to consider - take RW-3000 for an example - dynamic driver almost doesn't care about output impedance (as long as it is within reason) while multi-ways BA does (*single BA less so) - it really depends on how the IEM is designed. Electrical dampening is also not nearly as important on small dynamic / BA drivers in IEM as their mechanical dampening usually has much dominant effect than electrical dampening.

 

[Mlaihk]

RW-3000 is single dynamic. As with most dynamic drivers, their impedance curve is almost always flat from 20Hz to 20kHz and thus doesn't affected by the source's output impedance much.

---

I think there might be some over-blown assumption that 3 ohms output impedance is like the end of the world. It really isn't. Sure it will be better if it is sub-1 ohms, but 3 ohms for the most part are perfectly acceptable IMO. On the other hand, I think questions can be asked for those IEM manufacturers that think 10 ohm or so impedance is a good idea for IEM - it is not, and never has been. It is fully avoidable when designing the crossover circuit but IEM makers are too lazy to do the proper engineering. Yet somehow it becomes more of the fault for amp/source manufacturer not to match. Of course, there are other factors to consider - take RW-3000 for an example - dynamic driver almost doesn't care about output impedance (as long as it is within reason) while multi-ways BA does (*single BA less so) - it really depends on how the IEM is designed. Electrical dampening is also not nearly as important on small dynamic / BA drivers in IEM as their mechanical dampening usually has much dominant effect than electrical dampening.

In your opinion, any reason for designing IEMs with low impedance?

 

[ClieOS]

In your opinion, any reason for designing IEMs with low impedance?

Nothing particularly reasonable in engineering PoV besides just lower manufacturing cost in a tiny tiny bit. TDK once made an IEM that has an extra tiny circuit (just a few resistors and caps) to increase the IEM overall impedance and basically isolated the drivers from the source so it will sound pretty much the same whether the source has a 1 ohms or 50 ohms output impedance. Technically that circuit likely only added a few cents for TDK to include and they can skip it if they wanted to, but somehow I guess there is an TDK audio engineer somewhere who believe in properly designed IEM rather than minimizing profit. It can be done for every IEM, just that most IEM makers don't see drivability as their problem but instead users', that's why insanely low impedance IEM exist.

 

[Mlaihk]

Nothing particularly reasonable in engineering PoV besides just lower manufacturing cost in a tiny tiny bit. TDK once made an IEM that has an extra tiny circuit (just a few resistors and caps) to increase the IEM overall impedance and basically isolated the drivers from the source so it will sound pretty much the same whether the source has a 1 ohms or 50 ohms output impedance. Technically that circuit likely only added a few cents for TDK to include and they can skip it if they wanted to, but somehow I guess there is an TDK audio engineer somewhere who believe in properly designed IEM rather than minimizing profit. It can be done for every IEM, just that most IEM makers don't see drivability as their problem but instead users', that's why insanely low impedance IEM exist.

I am curious as most IEMs that I look at nowadays (non-chifi) are all with pretty low impedance. Fiios are one with IEMs at 32ohms. 64Audio/Campfire Audio/UM are all under 20 ohms (quite a few less than 10ohms) and Vision Ears and Empire Ears are in 20s. I will be quite surprised if only lazy engineering and/or cost cutting especially at those price ranges are the reasons......

 

[ClieOS]

I am curious as most IEMs that I look at nowadays (non-chifi) are all with pretty low impedance. Fiios are one with IEMs at 32ohms. 64Audio/Campfire Audio/UM are all under 20 ohms (quite a few less than 10ohms) and Vision Ears and Empire Ears are in 20s. I will be quite surprised if only lazy engineering and/or cost cutting especially at those price ranges are the reasons......

Because someone did it a long time ago and got away with it (*looking at you, Shure), thus it becomes obvious to the others that they can (and have) get away as well.

Let's take another atrocity that Shure did as an example - they introduced MMCX (which originally designed for high frequency radio communication equipment and antenna connection and has only a rated 500 mating cycle lifespan though often fail much early for IEM because radio equipments don't require the connector to rotate much) as an IEM connector over an decade ago (*you can read my 2011 review of SE215 about the MMCX issue even back then). Plenty of Shure MMCX early failure were reported due to MMCX poor tolerance yet Shure IEM were popular enough that many other IEM makers followed their footsteps thus MMCX becomes one of the standard for IEM connectors. It would take the Chinese IEM maker almost 7~8 yrs to come up with the expended MMCX male plug and protected MMCX female socket to finally remedy the issue (*FiiO being one of the very first, IIRC). Can you imagine how many pair of IEM were throw away or returned for warranty due to bad MMCX between all those time? I actually once overheard a conversation between a major Shure retailer complaining to a Shure local official rep. about the really bad return rate of their IEM all because of failed MMCX connection. It was bad enough that the local rep. needed to come to the retailer shop every week to pick up customer failed IEM and delivery IEM that came back from service. Yet Shure never did stop using MMCX, nor are many other IEM makers. Why? Because Shure did get away with it economy wise and so were others. Good thing is that there are still plenty other IEM makers that choose to stay away from MMCX. It shows that bad engineering is not a deterrent for business as long as it can still make money.