[old tech]

I wouldn't agree with this. There are many iem's now that have been implemented well. There is definitely concensus on the matter. The best regarded iem's are mostly multidriver. There is a huge community and plenty of reviews to support this.

Just because something hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done well. Maybe the first few multidriver iem's were not so great but things have moved on so much.

The question I'd have is why are multi-driver headphones necessary to reproduce a broad range of frequencies? Unlike loudspeakers, headphones are not required to move copious amount of air to produce bass frequencies.

 

[Impossible]

Exactly the same reason it's done with speakers and iem's. It's the fact that drivers designed for specific frequency ranges do a better job of producing those frequency then a full range driver. Less distortion, and able to hit higher dB in addition to being able to produce these frequencies simultaneously with more clarity.

 

[bigshot]

His point is that the reason it's done with speakers is primarily because of the bass. It takes a lot of energy to fill a room with loud low frequencies. That isn't an issue with IEMs. It is relatively easy to produce full range drivers when they are that small. Higher dBs? You can produce ear splitting volumes when the transducers are sealed in your ear canal. And distortion isn't generally an issue with tiny little drivers.

The drawbacks would be negotiating a smooth crossover. I would imagine that different shaped ear canals might need different crossovers to sound correct.

 

[Impossible]

Speakers mostly have seperat drivers for the higher frequencys as well. Often mids, lows and even seperat subwoofers.

The argument about crossovers is based on a badly implemented crossover. Which applies to anything bady implemented.

I think we can all agree multi driver for large format such as speakers can work well and also very small format like iem's.

Not sure why anyone would think having a format in between these wouldn't work?

 

[sander99]

Speakers mostly have seperat drivers for the higher frequencys as well.

With loudspeakers there are other considerations.

The [Edit: main] reason why multi-way loudspeakers use different sized drivers for different frequency bands is not that larger and hence heavier drivers would not be able per se to reproduce the higher frequencies, but because the dispersion pattern depends on the ratio between wavelength and driver size. Large drivers will beam the higher frequencies more than low frequencies.

If a vibration source is much larger than the wavelength it is reproducing it beams, if it is smaller than the wavelength it reproduces it spreads. The smaller it is the more dispersion you get. That's why tweeters are small.

With loudspeakers multiway is almost mandatory because a single full range driver would either be too big to have good dispersion in the high frequencies or it would be too small to shift enough air for reproducing the lower frequencies at a sufficiently high sound pressure level.

 

[Impossible]

So your saying there are valid reasons why using multiple drivers in speakers works well.
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[bigshot]

Yes, and those reasons aren’t necessarily applicable to IEMs.

 

[sander99]

So your saying there are valid reasons why using multiple drivers in speakers works well.

Yes, and those reasons aren’t necessarily applicable to IEMs.

Yes indeed, IEMs and headphones only have to blast the sound into the ear canal so wide dispersion is not needed.

 

[castleofargh]

I wouldn't agree with this. There are many iem's now that have been implemented well. There is definitely concensus on the matter. The best regarded iem's are mostly multidriver. There is a huge community and plenty of reviews to support this.

Just because something hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done well. Maybe the first few multidriver iem's were not so great but things have moved on so much.

I talk about specific objective variables and trends that I've noticed over a decade of looking at many IEM measurements and doing some myself for maybe half that time. If you rely on reviews to determine sound quality, I can only say that I have other standards. Most expensive, and most pushed by some marketing system is just not how I quantify sound quality. There certainly are other reasons to praise an IEM beside objective sound quality, I accept and respect them, but I do not agree to mistake them for qualifiers of objective sound quality.

Sennheiser keeps releasing only single driver in ear and still argues that it's to avoid unwanted distos and phase shifts caused by multidriver IEMs. Etymotic had to be sold to Lucid to start releasing a multidriver IEM(with mixed results apparently).
All those years went by where they and I weren't told there was definitely a consensus on the matter.

also about apple and oranges, out of the good multidriver IEMs you think about, how many use say 3 or 4 dynamic drivers? or 3 or 4 planar stuff? The very vast majority of multidriver IEM involve balanced armatures. Do you plan to scale up balanced armatures designs for headphones? Big ones with big tubes^_^? Or are you talking about using several dynamic drivers when even IEMs don't do it, which makes your oversimplified argument fall apart?

I have a bunch technical ideas that make me think multidriver headphone is a bad idea. But ultimately I keep coming back to my initial point. Why isn't it already done and popular when it's such a simple and obvious idea? "Because it surely sucks" is the answer that makes most sense to me.

 

[bigshot]

I have a set of KEF speakers that have an interesting concept... the drivers are all nested inside each other, one on top of the other. They say that having the sound source focused like that reduces phase error between drivers. It's an interesting theory and the speakers certainly sound fantastic, but I do see limitations that might not make it the best way to go in some circumstances.

It's human nature to want to define things as "best"... best technology, best design, best brand... But there are always trade offs and compromises, and defining what "best" means requires specifying the application, because best in one circumstance may not be best in another. The way to do that is to point out what works well with a particular application of a design, and listen to information about the situations when it may not work as well. Then you can decide whether something really is best for you.

Or you can just do it the easy way and assume that if a certain design actually was best, everyone would be using that design. I'd say KEF's unique design probably falls into that category. But it works for rear channel speakers because they have very wide and accurate dispersion and can mesh across a wide distance.

 

[Impossible]

So now your saying becuase its hasn't been done before, it must be a bad idea. What you mean is "you" can't think of a way do it well, or the ways you have thought of it, might not work well.

Sennheiser does single drivers in iem's but many more high end companies such as Sony do multidriver. The ie900 which is the top of the line sennheiser, is definitely not regarded as the best iem's, many would argue that a number of multi driver iem's are better.