[size=medium]My name is Med Dyer and I am one of the engineers at dB Logic, the company behind the SPL meter being talked about in this thread. I am not new to HeadFi, as previously I worked with Ultimate Ears on their consumer (ie non-custom) IEMs. I was a part of all of the UE products through the UE 700, but the triple.fi was the product I had the most involvement with, so it has been very gratifying to see it receive so much love here on HeadFi over the last few years. During that period I spent a lot of time on HeadFi, and I worked directly with a number of HeadFi members on UE beta tests and focus groups. I have also been to a number of HF meets, local and national, as a representative of UE.[/size]
[size=medium]Over the last few years my new company has spent a lot of time working on a method to limit sound pressure level (SPL) in headphones without adding distortion. We wanted to be able to produce headphones and IEMs that sound great, but that have a hard SPL limit. The idea here is that the SPL limiting would be an inaudible backup to keep listeners from exceeding 85dB SPL, and thereby encourage healthier listening habits. Other products do exist for SPL limiting, but they either sound terrible, with clipping and distortion, or they require batteries and a large "module" in the cable. Our products do not require power and they sound great even when turned up to the limit. For an audio guy like myself, these are the holy grail of SPL limiting -- no power, no distortion or audible artifacts, and tiny size. These products are fairly inexpensive considering the combination of sound quality and SPL limiting. We understand that the performance driven HeadFi crowd may not be the target audience, but your teenagers might be, or any other listener that needs an upgrade from stock earbuds and could benefit from SPL limiting. We have really tried to make the general listening experience so good that the limiting is not even a factor.[/size]
[size=medium]Now for the SPL meter. We knew that this would be a popular item on HF. It is very cool! You can use it to measure the SPL in any IEM, or with earbuds (like Apple), or to measure ambient / room noise. It works in real time, using your player and your music. It is extremely small, in fact it has a lanyard attachment point and some of our engineers carry them now on their keychains. It is not available for sale just yet, but it is in production right now. We will have it available for sale on our website and on Amazon in late February. We have had several units out with various beta testers the last few months and I can tell you that everyone likes them.[/size]
[size=medium]As these new products make it into the market I look forward to seeing the thoughts of those HeadFi users that end up using them. During the early days of the UE consumer products we all followed HF very closely to see what the comments were like. That was a very exciting time and we are hoping to duplicate it somewhat with this new company.[/size]
[size=medium]Thank you for your continued interest.[/size]
