the only multi driver heaphones i've seen are gaming headphones. and their driver setup is for positional audio, not for sound quality.
why is multi driver setup so popular in IEMs (even cheap ones) which is arguably more difficult to manufacturer considering such limited space to work with? why doesn't 99.99% of the headphones do that?
I believe Meze's planar driver design addresses that issue.
I suggest positioning the drivers in relation to the ear is a big issue, something in-ear devices don't have to deal with.
They tried with the Asus Centurion 7.1 and the smaller headphone drivers they packed in weren't nearly as good or loud as one big driver. They packed 7 in each ear cup and in theory it should have worked, but sounded lame in practice (especially with music).
I figured it would be better to put all of your resources into one good driver instead of multiple cheaper ones. I know the 1MORE Triple Driver Over-Ears had a little bit of fanfare for a while. Maybe the tiny IEM drivers have a tougher time reproducing the frequency range, so it makes more sense there?
To @drummerman1's point: take the classic AKG K340 hybrid dynamic-electret headphone.
The K340 uses a dynamic driver to reproduce the lower, lower-mid frequencies and an electret driver to reproduce the upper-mid, higher frequencies. While having an overall high degree of clarity, K340 exhibits a discontinuity in the clarity and transient response between the driver types. This is termed a lack of coherency. Enthusiastic owners of K340 have used various modifications to address this.
Final Audio made the Sonorous VI a few years back. DD for bass and mids, BA for treble. I demo'd a few times but they were uncomfortable for me. Thought they sounded pretty good at the time.
You avoid phase and crossover issues when using a single driver. IEM's have such small space that single driver IEM's often sacrifice either treble or bass. Multi-driver IEMs generally also use a different driver type than you would use in a headphone. The headphone drivers are small enough that they can reproduce treble without any issues so no need for multi driver and more complexity. Better to have a single point source than to try to make the sound from two drivers hit the ear at the same time in a confined space where. Even how you wear your headphones would impact the phase and frequency response in a multi driver setup.
Sennheiser used to have hd 230, closed back two driver headphones back in early 80's. Back then there was a lot of experimenting in the headphone space to figure out what works best. One full range driver has been deemed the way to go.
I remember a bunch of headphones trying to do this for surround sound back in the day(some still might try it). In the end though one driver ended up having better sound all around. I wonder if companies will revisit this idea with its success in the iem space.
I believe the ENIGMAcoustics Dharma D1000 is a multi-driver headphone that uses both electrostatic driver (does not require energizer) and dynamic driver. But you're right that most full sized audiophile headphones does not use multiple drivers
It is definitely hard to add in secondary or tertiary drivers and tune them properly with crossovers in an open or closed back full sized headphone. Also, you will end up with smaller drivers which will actually hinder a lot of other aspects of the headphone. Full sized headphones also have the ability to fully recreate the full audio spectrum (for most headphones) so they don't have the challenges that IEMs face. More focus on building one driver and doing it well makes more sense than slapping a bunch of little drivers in odd positions does.
i remember the times when headfi was better informed than it seems to be these days. there are the CZ-1, CZ-10 and CZ-8A from CROSSZONE which are said to have exceptional almost speaker like soundstage capabilities but the warmer sound sig didnt appeal to some reviewers.
I think the simplest answer is that you don't need it. Headphone drivers have no problem doing full range. Most speaker drivers don't. Neither do balanced armatures. That's why in speakers and IEMs you generally see multiple drivers, and in headphones you don't. Throw in issues with phase alignment, crossover design, resonances inside the earcup, and you get a whole bunch of extra complexity for no real tangible benefit. It's much better to throw the same amount of money into a single driver design and you'll get more mileage out of your R&D budget.
This is not to say it hasn't been tried, there are plenty of examples of it out there.
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