I've been using full sized headphones for a long time. Lately (over the last few years), it seems like just about everybody and their brother is releasing IEMs. I realize there is a large profit motive to do so because of the explosion of portable media devices. For a long time I've simply dismissed them as devices that sacrificed sound quality for size and portability.

However, it seems like IEMs are changing and improving by leaps and bounds. It's quite easy to find multiple driver IEMS, and one new device even has 6 balanced armatures! Considering the size of the drivers, I assume they have physics (less inertia) in their favor in comparison to the large diaphragms of full sized headphones.

Certainly, it seems there is a lot more actual technological changes in the IEM world than in the full sized headphone world.

Does anybody have any person experiences comparing IEMs to full size headphones? Would your replace your full sized headphone with an IEM? How is the sound in terms "in your head?" What other comments do you have?

It really intrigues me to think that an IEM could best a full sized headphone. I think I'd gladly ditch my full sized cans if IEMs did this with the comfort of a full sized headphone.

I realize I should ask these questions on one particular website that is more inclined to this topic. But that site has way too much fantasy and it's hard to separate truth from placebo.

Do you mean 3 in each enclosure?

In any case, I've been very happy with IEMs. Comfort is probably the biggest issue, but certainly no complaints for sound. I've tried Westone UM2, Shure E4, E500 (SE530), SE420, Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5EB. Full-sized headphones haven't been too interested. I've tried briefly the Bose Triport (very comfortable, don't know about sound quality) and I have Grado SR80's which I only use when I need to hear what's going on outside. Bass is lacking compared to all the IEMs above, and it's a tad too bright for my taste, but you get used to it after a while.

After testing all those IEMs, my favorites are the Westone UM2. I even bought them twice, cause I got rid of the first ones I bought. I sold the E500's cause they were pretty redundant, and for the price the build was finicky. My first pair had one of rubber cable holders break off easily, luckily I could claim warranty, but never used them again. Also sold the E4's, and now I keep the UM2, the SE430 (for no particular reason, I just like to keep them around, they look very cool too and the design is much better than previous generation E500) and the Super.fi 5EB for movies. The SF has wicked deep and strong bass.

I got one full-sized headphones: sennheiser hd595
And one IEM: sennheiser ie7.

This IEM, use a dynamic driver, unlike majority of IEMS that are balanced armature.
Most likely this means better bass, and less analytical sound.

I find the sound from the full-sized headphone more neutral, natural, and detailed.
Nevertheless, I won't use my HD595 with my portable mp3, nor sleep with them on my ears

I'm pretty satisfied with my IEM, and I don't care if my full-size headphone might have better sound quality.
This is just enough for me to enjoy every kind of music. And that's all what matters to me.
With cheap ipod earbuds, some music are unlistenable (example : emilie simon, album vegetal).


There's no proof that more balanced armatures always means better sound. It certainly means more expensive. The recent phonaks, are single balanced armature, and are quite popular at head-fi.
Don't forget that single balanced armature are evolving too ..


No, sound signature is not exactly the same, and I enjoy both differently.


Sometimes IEMs can be uncomfortable too... If you listen more than hour , with them stuck on your ears, you might have enough of them. Because your ears need to "breath".

6 in each enclosure! The JH Audio 13 Pro is the recent favorite at that unnamed headphone site, but at $1099 it's quite a bit out of the price range I could seriously consider. People are making all sorts of claims about them including them having the soundstage (read, out of head experience) of full sized headphones. They are the current favorite, assuming you can afford them.

Let it be known that I have no affiliation with JH Audio, I have never heard any of their gear, and am not offering any sort of recommendation for their stuff. It's just that the claims about them have got me wondering about the capabilities of IEMs.

I've heard about the Westone UM2. I'm currently considering them and the UM3X, just because they are supposed to have a fairly neutral sound.

Thanks for the info.

Well that 6-driver thing just seems blatantly overkill. The Westone 3 seem like a bargain then.

In my experience the Sennheiser IE 8's seem much better than the same company's HD555's or the noise canceling PCX 450's, considering only pure sonics. They really sound quite fabulous and, to me, listening to my iPod with them feels like a genuine high end experience. The imaging is really quite spectacular though, of course, hardly natural.

BUT: when wearing them the sounds of chewing and swallowing are made so prominent that I really can't eat anything comfortably with them on, and they also often make my pulse disconcertingly audible. So I often turn to the others instead. Now that the weather is cooling I usually take the 450's on the bus with me because the sound is pretty good and the noise canceling helps with the road roar.

But only the IE8's give me that "high end thrill".

So I would say that some IEMs can sound better than some expensive over the ear headphones. How the IE8's would compare with the HD 650's or 800's is beyond the power of my wallet to know.

I've owned the Shure E4 and E500, and I had a bad experience. My oddly shaped ear canals may have had something to do with this, but the bass rolloff in the E500 and the bass and treble rolloffs in the E4 put the E4 somewhere below ipod earphones for me and the E500 somewhere between those earbuds and all of the full-sized headphones I can remember owning (which are too many). I don't believe my experience is representative of that of most listeners, however.

I've been a longtime head-fier and am very pleased to have finally found this forum, which seems free from all of the BS that poisons head-fi and the other forums I've frequented, and expect, for that reason, that it will it will be much more useful to me. That said, I've been on head-fi a lot recently and the buzz surrounding the JH13 seems so widespread an unanimous that I think there's actually something to it. From what people have been saying, it seems like its better frequency response, together with its being a custom IEM (like I said, I had serious fit issues), might rectify all of the problems I had with universals. I think I'm going to give the JH13 a try.

At least IEMs are evolving, which is a much more than can be said for full sized headphones. But it's hard to know why exactly manufactures are increasing the number of armatures in a IEM. Consumers may assume that it's purely for "sound quality" but certainly manufacturers have many things to consider including the marketing of 3 drivers versus 1.

Compare this to full sized headphones. It seems like manufacturers have been just changing sound signatures for 10+ years and just making marketing claims. Senn quite literally made a cosmetic change to the HD580 and started charging quite a bit more for the HD600. There are some recent exceptions with the driver designs of the Senn HD800 and Beyer T1, but it's hard to separate fact from fiction in reviews and marketing.



What about in terms of "soundstage." After trying a lot of headphones I've come to appreciate the sense that I'm listening in a wide space (compared to earbuds), albeit a space that is still much smaller than you get from speakers. Some headphones have a very flat sound. How does the IE8 compare to the HD555 in this regard?



It would be nice to know how all this works. Is 6 really better than 3 or is it just marketing? Is it another 5.1,7.1,9.1,11.1 game? Do musicians really pay $1K+ for an IEM?



It's hard for me to tell. In the past many headphones have seen as the greatest gift to audioland. Any negative comments were seen as the rantings of a person with defective hearing. But, a year later, some of these same headphones are almost universally panned. Any claims of their perfection are seen to be made by people with defective hearing!

So I don't know. $1100 is a lot of money of a custom IEM that probably cannot even be resold or returned.

@odigg



The custom utimate ears 11, are around the same price. But they are only four balanced
armature, so for the price you get "less" (just kidding)
The high end earsonics have also similar price, but only with three balanced armatures ...

The big price does also from that they are all "customs molded iems", same for JH13.
You have to add at least 500$, to get customs.


The hd6xx serie need an amplifier to get the best of them (according to head-fi comments),
while hd5xx not, so I guess there's more than a cosmetic change.


If you want the IEMs with the best "soundstage" , take Sennheiser simple as that.
When I listen to my IE7, the "3d sound" can be incredibly immersive.
On some music this can be even disturbing: "Did someone open the door?
No this just comes from the music I listen".



Here's how I would explain things:
each balanced armature reproduce more or less faithfully a range of frequency.
The better are the balanced armature you use, the less you need to use
multiple balanced armature to cover faithfully all frequencies.
I guess each Brand are using their own "proprietary" balanced
armature, so according to their lab experiments, they might need more or less
balanced armature to reach the sound quality they are expecting.
Off course, I guess there's some marketing. I'm quite skeptical
for the need of 6 drivers.


The big price is more justified by the fact they are customs,
than the big number of balanced armatures.

Here are my comments:

IEMs and headphones can both sound great.

IEMs give you isolation which gives you improved S/N in many situations. Improved S/N is improved S/N - doesn't matter to me whether it is from cleaner electronics, more bit resolution or a good seal in the ear. (This also makes them dangerous for use while jogging etc.)

Headphones can give me a more stable sense of bass. If you're moving around with IEMs in, you hear a lot of low frequency interference from the movements of your body. You don't hear so much of that when you're ears are open into headphones.

I personally would like to know what is the justification for the existence of iPod style ear buds. I see people using these things on airplanes and subways and I'm thinking that either they can't hear the music/dialog or they have them cranked dangerously high. They hurt my outer ear too but apparently that's mostly just me. All I can figure is that they're popular because they're small and cheap.

@Notat

The iems have to be "sealed" properly with your ears, to get correct bass.
You have usually to test all the tips provided with your iems, to see wish one fit the best
for your ears. And for some people that's not enough, they buy separate tips
from different brand.

Usually "dynamic driver" reproduce deeper bass than balanced armature,
and I think they are less problematic if you don't get proper "seal".


Commonly the word "microphonics" is used to describe this.
Some iems have more microphonics than others; usually high end iems minimize this problem.


Many people are just "satisfied" with whatever is provided with their mp3 player.
Also if they ear buds broke , they look for something similar.
One thing that is nice with cheap ear buds, is that you are not too much afraid to break them accidentally.

I love my Sennheiser CX500's. Great sound quality IMO, less than $100 price tag and great for use with portable players.
JXL

The idea behind 2 and 3-way IEMs is that balanced armatures have a very limited frequency response, so this improves things. Pretty simple. As for the reasoning behind having more than one identical driver, Jerry Harvey of JH Audio said something about this. Unfortunately I won't be able to find the quote, but basically he said that these balanced armatures distort more at higher SPL. By using two drivers for each frequency range, as is the case with the JH13, the SPL of each driver can be halved at the same volume level for the listener. He made a reference to how at big concert venues, speakers use lots of smaller drivers, rather than one huge one. It's the same principle.

Jerry Harvey founded Ultimate Ears and designed their custom line, then sold the company to Logitech and founded JH Audio. He confined the new company to the aviation business for a while, but recently returned to pro and consumer audio with redesigns of Ultimate Ears' line.

$500 extra is way too high an estimate of the premium you pay for going custom. JH Audio's JH5 Pro only costs $399, and there are even less expensive IEMs from other manufacturers. You can get custom earpieces for universal IEMs for around $100-200. Keep in mind that you will be paying for the audiologist appointment as well, which should cost around $50-$150.

I've never heard of the HD580 being identical to the HD600 aside from cosmetics and doubt they are, but a few head-fiers saying that one is hard to drive and one is easy to drive is hardly a reason to believe that they aren't the same. Those people are crazy.

Well, I turn the bass control all the way up. To me they then seem to be flat down to the deepest notes I have on any recording, but others complain about "mid bass bloat" that way. We really don't yet know the "correct" response for headphones of any type to give an audibly flat response, it seems.

The IE8's seem to float left and right channels a few inches outside my head, and on the occasional bit of binaural sound effects (such as on the children playing sounds after track 5 of "The Wall") they seem to float sounds quite a few feet to the left and right (but not ahead). The image is very pleasing to me, but not really "natural". I get no sense of sounds coming from in front of me, for instance.

I have not double blinded these or any other phone against anything, so take my impressions with that in mind. Your mileage may vary! On the other hand that different speaker-end transducers usuallly sound audibly different to one another is, I believe, not controversial.

This makes me ask another question. What SPLs are we talking about? Are 3 driver designs audibly distortion free at hearing damage levels? If so, what's the point of making them distortion free at even higher SPLs?



I believe the HD580 and HD600 share the same drivers and, at least to my eyes, a nearly identical (or identical) headband design. The grills for the HD600 are metal and Senn claims the drivers are better matched. So if the HD600 is basically the HD580 with a metal grill, I'd judge it as a cosmetic upgrade. I recall the grills being a whopping $20. The HD600 sells for twice what the HD580 sold for when new.

I don't mean to argue with you about this and I'm content if somebody demonstrates I'm talking out of my rear.

@steaxauce

That doesn't seem true with the recent phonaks for instance. People seems satisfied with them, for lows, mids, and highs. I rather have a recent iem model with single balanced armature, than an old one with two balanced armature, because the technology is evolving.



I didn't hear of the problem of distortion at high volumes, with dynamic drivers. That's an additional motivation for me to prefer dynamic drivers over balanced armatures.


Then there's also the problem of interferences . That's not obvious.


Most of the time , the overall cost for going to customs is $1k+
And I wouldn't be surprised that each brand are boosting the price for the high end models (i.e models that allow customs) , as much as they can. Because they are reserved for the "audiophile elite" (put any joke here).

I honestly don't know, but I think it would be a jump to assume that 3-driver designs have inaudible distortion levels at normal listening levels. All I can say is that, from what JH said, it seems that they perform better at lower SPL.


I may have to look into those Phonaks; I hadn't heard of them. Some armatures have better frequency responses than others, of course, but this nevertheless is the idea behind having a crossover network with multiple drivers.


That they have lower distortion at lower volumes doesn't mean they have particularly bad distortion at higher volumes. It's pretty much impossible to extrapolate what a completely different technology will sound like based on measurements and design info. Better to stick to listening tests.


He just implied that the SPL would be lower with multiple drivers. I extrapolated that it would be halved without thinking about interference, so I apologize for that. Though, since the two drivers are adjacent to each other and in phase, it would seem that they would only interfere constructively.


My guess is that pricing would be more based on what they can be marketed for than what they cost to produce, but custom IEM makers target professional musicians more than audiophiles (or at least it used to be that way). The pros are generally a lot more sensitive to BS than the audiophools who buy such things.

Microphonics is translation of vibration into electricity. The effect I experience is a telegraphing of vibration into my ears - there's no electricity involved. I use Etymotic ER-4's. How much more high end do I need to go?

My Sennheiser IE8's exhibit the same effect, bur I don't know if they come in above or below your Ety's in the expensiveness sweepstakes. I believe the effect is caused by bone conduction and is not a microphonic effect, whatever they call it.

@Notat


In the context of IEMs, the word "microphonics" is just used to talk of "the noise you get when your IEM cable brushes against clothing". I don't think there's any electricity involved here.


You have to gather informations or test what you buy.
Here's an interesting comparison of 21 popular iems, done by "dfkt" :
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15243
You can see on that comparison, that despite their relatively expensive price the Etymotics ER-6 have annoying microphonics.

If you really believe IEMs with multiple drivers perform better(wider freq range, lower distortion, etc) than IEMs with a single driver, you are quite wrong.



Do UE-11Pro(3-way) & SE530(2-way) perform better than ER4(1-way)?

What you get from multiple drivers are bass boost & more distortion.

According to D.Wilson from Etymotic Research:

@udauda
These graph don't tell anything about sound quality.

The apple earbuds are crap when compared to any serious IEM, there's no doubt about that; and I can't see how you could deduce this from first graph.


I guess that's hard to tell, without listening to them.

This opposite statement is just as wrong. Basing a statement about the relationship of two types of tokens by looking at just two tokens is flawed logic. The existence of just one multi driver IEM that is worse than one with a single driver doesn't show anything.



You do know, that for the domain of IEMs the ideal, most neutral piece would have a non-flat frequency response (in contrast to speakers), right?



Just plain false. Compare top of the line IEMs as Westone's to your Etymotic darlings.



So you have been tricked into drinking marketing Kool Aid B by the simple ploy of some other statement called Kool Aid A.

You must be referring to the case of the missing 6dB. If you take a look at Here, Here, and Here, you'd realize a diffuse-field-compensated(a human diffuse-field HRTF deducted from a linear data) flat-FR is the most suitable, even with headphones, earphones, & IEMs. (flat-FR w/ an additional bone-conducted vibration would make the bass sound more natural though)


Did you know, DF-compensated, Westone3(UM3) outputs audio signal only upto 10kHz? And that's a 3-way IEM. If you get a chance to fiddle around with a ITU-T P.58 compliant HATS equipped w/ IEC-60318-4 ear simulators, you'll see what I mean.

Nope.



That's the point. For stereo signals, so about 99% of all listened music, without further processing a flat headphone FR is not optimal. A headphone with a FR approximating a DF compensated FR will sound more neutral. Else you'd have to bump a sticker on the box "This IEM's flat frequency response will cause non neutral perception of audio without further processing. Please do not use without applying a proper HRTF."



Feel free to post detailed results and a comparison to your Etymotics. I have successfully measured the thresholds of my hearing around 16kHz with a pair of UM2 using sweeps. So I somewhat doubt this claim.

I'd love to do that, but I don't have the data with me now. Sorry to disappoint you there.

The closest thing you can get from the open public is:


I believe the measurement was done by a Japanese headphone enthusiast named Fuchinove, with a DIY-silicone tube. Since above data doesn't reflect an accurate occluded-ear impedance(half-wavelength resonance @ 13kHz), you'll have to account there should be a +10dB boost around @ 10kHz. Also, you gotta keep in mind it is not a ISO-11904 diffuse-field compensated data.

When everything is properly compensated, the graph would show W3 outputting upto 10kHz(+-6dB) in addition to the high-Q deep @ 3kHz. And your statement above:

is exactly what ER-4S is trying to simulate, unlike the perfect DF-flat ER-4B. (Or if you're referencing this article, arguing that equalizing somewhere between DF&FF is ideal, oh no.. Almost all of the high-end headphones from AKG, Sennheiser, Grado, Beyer are accurately DF-equalized.)

By the way, I am not trying to convince you that ER4 is the greatest of all IEMs. I'm just saying more drivers don't always guarantee better performances, especially in IEMs. If you can hear 16kHz with your UM2, it should mean UM2 should have a wider FR range than W3. (and I believe UM2 has less # of drivers than W3)

We can agree on that. I am just somewhat sceptic, that Westone would release such a bad high end product in their portfolio after the acclaimed UM2.

Maybe the Westone UM3X is better? I've read some comments that the Westone 3 has a very "hi-fi" sound as compared to the more balanced sound of hte UM3X. Of course, without FR graphs it's hard to know.

rpp3po - you've had experience with IEMs and full sized headphones. Any comments comparing the two (beyond the obvious differences in sonic signature of two different products)?

@odigg

Yes, the Westone 3 are somehow a failure, and people at head-fi are not much interested by them.
The UM3X have a lot more success, and there's no doubt that they are good IEM from the different reviews I've seen. Now, if the use of three balanced armature is justified, that's an other question.



Why not having both ? I think both are interesting differently.
Perhaps it would be just like comparing glasses vs contact lens, they do not provide the same comfort.

AFAIK , for the same sound quality, IEMs are much more expensive, than full sized headphones.

I own Allesandro MS1 (about equivalent to Grado SR60/80), Sennheiser 595, and Westone UM2. I use the UM2 about 70% of the time, they are my greatest enjoyment. The higher SNR due to almost completely locked out external noise makes them great for recordings with a large dynamic range and for any place that is not completely silent (very rare where I live). Also most of my positive ABX results (lossy codecs) happened on the UM2. But while the UM2 are great bass players, I sometimes miss the "feeling" of bass. The MS1 and HD 595 also can't make your bones shake as speakers but at least your auricles. So for some music I still prefer my larger ones.

? I've always heard the opposite is true.

@Soap


After a google search , I found this recent thread at head-fi:
Do IEM's match Traditional Can in the Sound Quality/$ Ratio?

In this thread, the overall consensus, is that in term of sound quality,
the full sized headphones are better for the the money.

I wonder how you managed to only hear the opposite.

If that's the consensus at head-fi then I am quite certain that the exact opposite is actually true.

I have both Westone 3 and UM3X and I find UM3X clearly better and more neutral. W3 has elevated mid-bass which is not something I enjoy, it just downs the mids and makes them sound a bit muddy to me.

You cynic. How can you disagree with these slam-dunk arguments:

QUOTE (Nigel79)

Nope

QUOTE (Rise To The Top)

NEVER. Portability ALWAYS comes at a cost. ALWAYS. No exception.

QUOTE (Berlioz)

For under $150, IEM's will be hard pressed to outperform a good pair of full sized cans. As already mentioned, the ultra high end IEM's can outperform their full sized counterparts.The JH13's have been compared head to head against HD800's and have won, and this is coming from some people on this forum who I have a lot of respect for.

When I started this thread I was just trying to get a general idea of how IEMs compare to headphones. I'm not a fan of owning 10 different pairs of headphones/IEMs so I don't want to buy stuff and just put it in the closet, which I have done already.. Compared to full sized headphones it's is also very difficult to demo IEMs and (depending on vendor) return options are limited.

I want an honest report of IEMs, the capabilities, and even technical information on armatures. On other websites I can get plenty of opinions. But they are intermixed with glorious reviews of cables, power supplies, fuses. Beyond that, a deluge of favorable reviews on some new product can turn totally sour 3-6 months later. Take the Westone 3. When it first came out people were just raving about how great it was. Now many see them as badly colored.

When you focus these trends on a $1000+ Custom IEM, purchases of this product will probably also (maybe I should run a correlation) be people who praise cables, expensive headphone amps, "audiophile" DACs, and who knows what else. So if somebody says a certain IEM is better than full sized headphones, what in the world am I supposed to believe?

Anyway, I'm ranting. The point it, if established members on HA tell me they like their IEMS, that just gives me a more balanced and honest viewpoint to work from.



Custom IEMs can be purchased for less than $400. So there clearly isn't some essential cost/labor factor driving the cost of some custom IEMs to $1K.

@odigg

Well, people I've seen at head-fi are often owning multiple headphones. Instead of puting things on closet they try to resell.
When they are just curious about a headphone, some try to buy already used one at ebay.
Also it seems that some people return to the seller headphones, after quickly trying them.
But I think it's hard to compare pairs of headphones/IEMs , without collecting a minimum.


You have to test yourself.
You can never trust a single review. When I can't test, I compare multiple reviews , with no warranty that I'll find the "truth".
Also , I take a look at difference websites. This involve some work.


They call this at head-fi forum , "fan of the month". When a new product is released everyone is excited about it, and after a month or two not that much.

Frankly, I don't feel the need to compare IEMs to full sized headphones, to enjoy them . I mean, I don't have the feeling to miss something by only using them. Portability is just a great convenience.

Also I think that buying $1k+ IEMs is a waste of money.

I can take usually care of most of the noise through the cables by routing the wires behind my ears. I was talking about LF noise created when your whole body is moved.

@Notat


Well, from a guide at head-fi:


You can find the guide here:
Basic Guide to In-Ear-Canalphones

Obviously he is talking about when the cables hit/rub up against something... it prevents from loud thumping you get from pulling and such on the cables... the pinna dampens the sound traveling in the cable because of it resting on the ear.

Yes, bone conduction. Is this possibly a fundamental limitation with IEMs or is there a way to design around it? Good design can minimize acoustic transmission through the cable but how do you address transmission through your bones. You don't hear so much of this with conventional headphones or speakers. Perhaps sealed ears trap and magnify internal sounds.

All we can do there is to tell you about our own personal experience with them; no one can know for sure what your experience will be until you try them yourself. You can get the same thing over at head-fi. Sure, you can't trust anyone, good reviews don't guarantee anything, yada yada. But as long as HA members are doing nothing but stating their own unsubstantiated experience, without blind tests, etc, we're no more reliable than head-fiers (and still a hell of a lot more reliable than speculation based on the technical merits of the two technologies). You're just going to have to jump in sooner or later.

Another important thing to remember is that particularly with IEMs, various people will have widely varied experiences. How they end up sounding for you depends on what your ears are like; i.e. whether or not you can get a good seal and fit, and probably on how your ears/ear canals affect sound under normal circumstances (when they're not bypassed, as with IEMs). For me, I had a great deal of trouble getting a good seal with the Shure E4 and E500, all of the tips were very uncomfortable for me, there was always a severe treble rolloff (I had to EQ the hell out of them to get them to have a frequency response that was anything like what I got with any of the full-sized or earpad headphones, or even earbuds that I've owned), and bass was boomy and dull. Your mileage will vary.

Also, I want to say that in my experience, headphone reviews are much more likely to reflect their actual sound than reviews of products like DACs, amps, etc. because the differences between headphones, unlike the differences between those components, are usually above people's "psychological noise floor," i.e. the differences are pronounced enough that you can know they're not imagined. The widely varied headphone reviews, and IEM reviews in particular, accordingly, reflect different tastes and anatomies more than they reflect the fact that human beings are psychotic, unlike reviews of components with more subtle or nonexistent sound signatures.

@Notat
You have the same "bone conduction" problem with what they call in french "Boules Quies" or "Oropax" , which are kind of earplugs.


Probably something like that.

The problem of bone conduction might even be worse with customs IEMs.
I read on a review about "Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pro" (cost around $1k+ ),
that "eating cornflakes while wearing the UE 11 can almost lead to noise-induced tinnitus".
The review here.

Here is a FR chart from Phonak Audeo for their PFE. This is a single driver model. As you can see the FR range extends quite far (for an IEM) in both directions.





I agree with you to a point but I find even evaluations of transducers to be much more balanced here on HA. On many audiophile sites there is the persistent belief that expensive speakers/headphones cost that much because of engineering. People here are much more skeptical and ready to say that marketing and exclusivity can drive up MSRP, not just engineering or technical capabilities. I've seen people on Head-Fi stubbornly support audible differences between two headphones (e.g. K701 and K702) even when the manufacturer says the differences as cosmetic or something else (e.g. a split cable versus a single cable).

One of my original questions with this thread was just an inquiry into the future of IEMs. If, in the future, IEMs can sound like full sized headphones, that would be fantastic. However, if there is some inherent design limitation, like when comparing full sized headphone soundstage to speakers, then full sized headphones will always be around.

Anyway, I have found a sub $150 IEM I'm willing to experiment with and compare with my full sized cans. I'll just have to wait till it comes back in stock so I can order!

It's a fundamental problem with IEMs, can not be fixed. Personally, I can't stand it, so all the IEM-obsessed discussions at head-fi are irrelevant to me

Btw, if you are looking for a small earphone that would rival full-size headphones I strongly suggest taking a look at the Yuin PK1. It's an "earbud", non-IEM, and sounds unbelievably good (actually the whole PK line is outstanding).

odigg, which one are you ordering?

The brain is an amazing thing. I can no longer hear myself walk when wearing IEMs. Bothered the piss out of me the first few days, and then slowly it disappeared.
Rough back of the envelope calc says I've worn IEMs for around 5000 hours, but my brain learned to filter it out way before then.
I even jog with them in.

I've heard either the PK or the OK series. I was completely astonished by the sound as I imagine most people are when they hear them. However, I've never found earbud style earphones comfortable as my ears always starting hurting after a while. They also fall out quite easily and offer little isolation which completely defeats the purpose of a portable headphone.



At this point I've settled on the Audeo PFE. The price is quite sensible (in the land of "audiophile" headphones at least), they are supposed to be fairly neutral sonically, and apparently compete quite well against more expensive models. If nothing else, I'll get a taste for IEMs compared to full sized headphones.

I believe the proper term of this phenomenon is called: microphonics.

http://www.macworld.com/article/55152/2007...analphones.html

Well, I happened to come across the statement Jerry Harvey made about the advantage to using two drivers per frequency band in his JH-13 Pro. Here it is:

"The balanced armatures when coupled lower distortion. They also are working much more efficiently because of 2 drivers doing the work. Each driver does half the work which increases headroom. A concert PA system like a L Acoustics line array will have roughly 64 15" speakers,128 8" speakers and 32 2" high drivers hanging in the air. Also 64 18" sub bass speakers. In order to create headroom which is gain before distortion you need the work load distributed across multiple components. Yes you can distort all of the components but the sheer gain to do so would be at the threshold of pain. Headroom equals clean audio when operated at a normal spl. Jerry"

Also, you may be interested in checking out this list of head-fier impressions. It seems unanimous that the JH-13 is at least in the league of the top ($1000+) full-sized headphones.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/5911775-post3001.html

This seems beyond FOTM. Several long-time head-fiers have sold off their huge collections of gear because the 13 has made everything else moot. Even if you think everyone on head-fi is crazy, it's tough to deny that there's got to be something to all this. Also, check out the review on touchmyapps.com, below.

http://www.touchmyapps.com/2009/09/30/jerr...-for-your-ears/