Wednesday 19 October 2011

Drivability issues with headphone

Many have thought that when it comes to high impendence headphone (250ohm to 300ohm headphones), they are unable to be drive it out of a computer, portable amp or even a weaker amp that is not up to the task. When people talk about the problem of unable to drive a headphone, they usually mean that they are unable to power up or even have a volume that is loud enough for listening. These are some of the misconception by audiophile especially the newbie. They are like a poison spreading from one newbie to another and even to some senior member without actually knowing the real effect of the words. Welcome to the audiophile world, where there is always full of misconception and myths spread from one person to another without really knowing the real purpose or real source of the information. When it comes to drivability issue, you will still be able to listen to the high impendence headphone from a computer out. And you can even get enough level to blow your eardrums. If it is drivable through a computer, why do I still need an amp? Well the headphone can be power till an ear deafening level, but I find that when you do so, the level of the SPL went up more than the music or sound that coming out of it. I don’t have a tool to measure it but this is what my ears felt when the first time I use Beyerdynamic DT880 250 ohm without a proper amplification. Why I didn’t use an amp in the first place you may ask. Well I do have two amplifiers at that time but both are unable to give enough juice to it. Basically what you get from using those weak sources is lots of air pressure on your eardrum but the volume still doesn’t felt like loud enough. At this stage I think the pressure is build up enough to damage your ear while the volume of the sound is not really high. It’s very hard to notice the effect, and most of my friends just blast the volume to the max with the amp. When I put in enough concentration I can feel the amount of pressure that keep on building in my ears while the details from the music just doesn’t improve any further until at one point it just clip and shows no improvement but the pressure still can be increased further. I think this is what you call a low SNR (Sound to Noise Ratio). This is where they measure the amount of sound (music or source of sound to a noise). What it means here is that the lower the amount the lesser details and volume can be heard when compared to the noise (source). If you want to know I’ve been using an underpowered DT880 for almost a year before I got enough money to purchase the budget powerful amp when it is available in Malaysia. And at some point I actually store the headphone occasionally. But now with a proper amp, it is out of the storage and into my ears again.

For more information about amplifier please refer to this post. (Will be updated later)

2 comments:

  1. Just a simple question:"How many are actually looking from the aspect of science or engineering,when talking about driving high ohms?"

    Looking forward to your update.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I interpret correctly of your meaning, I think most people these days that have some experience or knowledge of audiophile stuffs will be looking into the specs of the headphone (ohm) when choosing an Amplifier.

    But they do made a mistake into thinking that higher ohm requires more amplification power but in actuality they drive it using the wrong amps. I always heard people comment that a certain headphone amplifier can't drive or not powerful enough for a certain high impedance headphone while lower ohm doesn't need an amplifier to sound its best because they are easy to drive. But I did seen some low impedance headphone that do require a lot of amplification.

    ReplyDelete

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