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Showing 1 of 59 conversations about:
RareAirs
156
Oct 4, 2017
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I see these are 50 ohm impendence and 110 dB sensitivity which seems high to me for portable use of an iem.
i have couple nice headphones for my desktop setup and have the klipsch s3m in ears that I’ve had for years but I am a rookie with iems so I am wondering how loud my iPhone or iPad(for Netflix and movies) can really get these.
Anyone have these know how they will sound coming out of an iPhone for portable use?
GunsOfBrixton
911
Oct 6, 2017
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RareAirsNot sure where you are in your audiophile journey, so apologies if this is stuff you already know, and I don't mean to be patronizing at all, but here's an over-simplified version of how to interpret those specs that may benefit others. These headphones will produce 110db with one milliwatt of power. While 50 ohms is a touch higher resistance than the typical ~32 for a portable, it's still pretty low resistance - not at all hard to drive 1mw through. 110db is a pretty typical target volume when calculating whether you need an amp - it's quite loud and gives most people plenty of "headroom" to hear details across the audible frequency range. The onset of pain is 120db, if I remember right. So, your Apple devices will drive these painfully loud if you want.
You can run into volume challenges when you have lower sensitivity headphones because you have to double the power for roughly every 3 db in volume. So when you have a sensitivity of, say, 89 db, you can see how it adds up 92db=2mw, 95db=4 mw, 98db=8, and so on. Then, when you look at the resistance (ohms) side, the higher the number, the harder it is to drive milliwatts through. For example (not accurate proportions), a device that can drive 20mw through 32 Ohms, might only be able to drive 3 mw through 320 ohms. So when you see specs like 93db/mw sensitivity and 300 ohms resistance, you're into the territory where you likely need an amp to get good performance.
This is a layman's understanding, and I'm running from memory on this, so my numbers might be a bit off. And, again, this is over-simplified. There is definitely more nuance, and you can totally geek out on this stuff. That said, if you understand the sensitivity (db/mw) and resistance (ohms) specs at this level, you can easily identify the obvious scenarios where an amp is/is not needed. This falls in the clear "not" category.
You can run into volume challenges when you have lower sensitivity headphones because you have to double the power for roughly every 3 db in volume. So when you have a sensitivity of, say, 89 db, you can see how it adds up 92db=2mw, 95db=4 mw, 98db=8, and so on. Then, when you look at the resistance (ohms) side, the higher the number, the harder it is to drive milliwatts through. For example (not accurate proportions), a device that can drive 20mw through 32 Ohms, might only be able to drive 3 mw through 320 ohms. So when you see specs like 93db/mw sensitivity and 300 ohms resistance, you're into the territory where you likely need an amp to get good performance.
This is a layman's understanding, and I'm running from memory on this, so my numbers might be a bit off. And, again, this is over-simplified. There is definitely more nuance, and you can totally geek out on this stuff. That said, if you understand the sensitivity (db/mw) and resistance (ohms) specs at this level, you can easily identify the obvious scenarios where an amp is/is not needed. This falls in the clear "not" category.
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