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Showing 1 of 1924 conversations about:
lintsu
4
Jul 14, 2018
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I thought these headphone is gonna be easy to run. it's quiet AF, why?
Michael-Q
243
Jul 18, 2018
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lintsuIt truly is sad that marketing has pushed for "low impedance = easy to drive." The number you should initially look at is efficiency and/or sensitivity. Efficiency helps inform you how much energy it takes to produce a certain sound pressure level (SPL) aka loudness given in dB/mW units. Sensitivity informs you how much voltage you need for a certain loudness given in dB/V. Both terms help define how easy or hard a pair of headphones is to drive. Another important thing to look at is the amount of current needed for a given loudness. A website like http://www.digizoid.com/headphones-power.html can help with figuring that out.
Manufactures often only list one or the other (dB/mW or dB/V). Massdrop lists sensitivity but often enough it's actually listing efficiency (have to check manufactures websites). And... even manufactures misuse these terms. You have to look at the units (dB/mW or dB/V) to truely know which is being used. Hence, the confusion everyone seems to have. It's not exactly straight forward to determine if a headphone is easy to drive.
In this case, the HE350 has an efficiency rating of 93 dB/mW (btw higher the number the easier it is to drive). If you compare this to enough headphones you'll learn it isn't the worst, but it's still pretty bad for a consumer headphone around this price . If you enter in this information into a website like http://www.digizoid.com/headphones-power.html you'll see that to get 110dB SPL, you need ~1Vrms and 50mA which is basically at the limit or too much for many devices to provide.
side note : 1Vrms = about 3V peak to peak - nearing smart phone battery limit. And the op amps (simple amplifiers) probably used in your portable device have current limits between 35mA and 70mA from what I've seen (not confident what a good range should be).
(for these headphones) If you want it another 5dB SPL louder, voltage and current requirements nearly double. If you want another 5dB, nearly doubles again. It wouldn't surprise me if many devices can only get these headphones to 105 dB SPL, which is probably why you find them to be kind of quiet.
Manufactures often only list one or the other (dB/mW or dB/V). Massdrop lists sensitivity but often enough it's actually listing efficiency (have to check manufactures websites). And... even manufactures misuse these terms. You have to look at the units (dB/mW or dB/V) to truely know which is being used. Hence, the confusion everyone seems to have. It's not exactly straight forward to determine if a headphone is easy to drive.
In this case, the HE350 has an efficiency rating of 93 dB/mW (btw higher the number the easier it is to drive). If you compare this to enough headphones you'll learn it isn't the worst, but it's still pretty bad for a consumer headphone around this price . If you enter in this information into a website like http://www.digizoid.com/headphones-power.html you'll see that to get 110dB SPL, you need ~1Vrms and 50mA which is basically at the limit or too much for many devices to provide.
side note : 1Vrms = about 3V peak to peak - nearing smart phone battery limit. And the op amps (simple amplifiers) probably used in your portable device have current limits between 35mA and 70mA from what I've seen (not confident what a good range should be).
(for these headphones) If you want it another 5dB SPL louder, voltage and current requirements nearly double. If you want another 5dB, nearly doubles again. It wouldn't surprise me if many devices can only get these headphones to 105 dB SPL, which is probably why you find them to be kind of quiet.
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