Vamp898 said:

Full Size Headphones have worse sound quality than IEM, scientifically proven.

First of all, especially closed IEM, isolate. They lower you background noise by +30db which is essential for sound quality.

Than a lot of these are multi-way multi-driver BA IEM where every single driver is tuned to perfection and all they have to control is the air inside your ear canal with the only reflections coming from an ear canal.

An over ear Headphone have to do the same job with one single driver, that needs to be big at the same time, while controlling the reverb from your head, your ear, the earcups and so on.

It is physically impossible that an Headhpone can ever compete with an IEM and every measurement that was ever done is backing this up.

Even the best Planar Magnetic and/or EST fail to reproduce even an simple rectangular signal because they are not fast enough because one single driver needs to do the whole frequency spectrum while the sound is bouncing off everywhere and extern noise from your room is getting in your ear and just everything messes up.

Headphones are not even Close to IEM in terms of sonic performance and that is exactly the reason why more and more sound studios switch from speakers/headphones to Multi-BA IEM

This is an frequency response measurement of an 5-way 5-BA IEM


This is the measurement of an Planar Magnetic Headphone made for the same use case


And i am not talking about the tuning, i am talking about how even the measurement is. And you can hear that, instantly.

If you play a frequency response test file wiith the IER-M9, it sounds absolutely perfect, homogenic and flat. If you play an frequency repsonse test file with any over ear headphone, no matter what, you will hear a constant shaking and vibration in volume with dips and peaks that are even strong enough to make the sound disappear for a short moment.

And this is just a simple frequency response sinus wave. Try an rectangular wave or multitone or actual music and Headphones completely fall apart.

Take the 6000$ Hifiman Susvara

And compare it to this 300$ entry level IEM

or even this 250$ Single DD

Not even remotely close. Headphones are significantly inferior to IEM, especially when it comes to correct and accurate reproduction of the original sound.

And speaker systems are even worse. Even an 40'000$ Speaker system in an perfectly well tuned room are worlds beyond Headphones and Earphones.

That people prefer Speaker and Headphones to IEM is _because_ they colour the sound and change it and make everything sound bigger than real life and wow and whatnot. But in terms of Monitoring, in "Playing the original Sound File as perfectly as possible", they are worse in every single aspect.

Click to expand...

Vamp898 said:

Full Size Headphones have worse sound quality than IEM, scientifically proven.

First of all, especially closed IEM, isolate. They lower you background noise by +30db which is essential for sound quality.

Than a lot of these are multi-way multi-driver BA IEM where every single driver is tuned to perfection and all they have to control is the air inside your ear canal with the only reflections coming from an ear canal.

An over ear Headphone have to do the same job with one single driver, that needs to be big at the same time, while controlling the reverb from your head, your ear, the earcups and so on.

It is physically impossible that an Headhpone can ever compete with an IEM and every measurement that was ever done is backing this up.

Even the best Planar Magnetic and/or EST fail to reproduce even an simple rectangular signal because they are not fast enough because one single driver needs to do the whole frequency spectrum while the sound is bouncing off everywhere and extern noise from your room is getting in your ear and just everything messes up.

Headphones are not even Close to IEM in terms of sonic performance and that is exactly the reason why more and more sound studios switch from speakers/headphones to Multi-BA IEM

This is an frequency response measurement of an 5-way 5-BA IEM


This is the measurement of an Planar Magnetic Headphone made for the same use case


And i am not talking about the tuning, i am talking about how even the measurement is. And you can hear that, instantly.

If you play a frequency response test file wiith the IER-M9, it sounds absolutely perfect, homogenic and flat. If you play an frequency repsonse test file with any over ear headphone, no matter what, you will hear a constant shaking and vibration in volume with dips and peaks that are even strong enough to make the sound disappear for a short moment.

And this is just a simple frequency response sinus wave. Try an rectangular wave or multitone or actual music and Headphones completely fall apart.

Take the 6000$ Hifiman Susvara

And compare it to this 300$ entry level IEM

or even this 250$ Single DD

Not even remotely close. Headphones are significantly inferior to IEM, especially when it comes to correct and accurate reproduction of the original sound.

And speaker systems are even worse. Even an 40'000$ Speaker system in an perfectly well tuned room are worlds beyond Headphones and Earphones.

That people prefer Speaker and Headphones to IEM is _because_ they colour the sound and change it and make everything sound bigger than real life and wow and whatnot. But in terms of Monitoring, in "Playing the original Sound File as perfectly as possible", they are worse in every single aspect.

Click to expand...

Not so fat head said:

Back to my original point, $300 would be a good value for the Hifiman TWS. TWS (with exceptional NC and DSP) have a large advantage over IEM’s in noisy environments. Passive only goes so far, hence NC was developed at considerable cost…

Click to expand...

Not so fat head said:

Back to my original point, $300 would be a good value for the Hifiman TWS. TWS (with exceptional NC and DSP) have a large advantage over IEM’s in noisy environments. Passive only goes so far, hence NC was developed at considerable cost…

Click to expand...

Andrew_WOT said:

I had issues with external noise with open AND closed full size phones, flathead earbuds, but never with IEMs, esp. if you have properly sized tips.
Granted it might not be enough if you work with jackhammer, but in reasonably noisy office environment, bus, or street they isolate pretty well.
My personal opinion but ANC with IEM deep insertion style TWS is just overrated.
Plus ANC always ruins SQ.

Click to expand...

Not so fat head said:

Back to my original point, $300 would be a good value for the Hifiman TWS. TWS (with exceptional NC and DSP) have a large advantage over IEM’s in noisy environments. Passive only goes so far, hence NC was developed at considerable cost…

Click to expand...

jasonb said:

My ER4SR blocks out more noise than my AirPods Pro 2 and MTW3. So passive can be just as good or better, and with passive you don’t have the ANC messing with the SQ.

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jant71 said:

If you wait Hifiman always becomes a great value! The Black Friday sale isn't that far away.

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Not so fat head said:

I doubt they’ll cancel bass rumble from trains, cars, nor airplanes…. I don’t see an argument here, NC is a major selling point for TWS.. Properly implemented, NC now can cancel noise/spikes in a large part of the audio spectrum. With advanced DSP. Millions of samples per second are taken and processed…. Apples/oranges….

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Not so fat head said:

I doubt they’ll cancel bass rumble from trains, cars, nor airplanes….

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Andrew_WOT said:

Stick fingers into your ears, this is how good passive NC can be. Add to that that there is also some sound coming out of IEMs drowning external noise even more.
Active NC on or off on AZ80 and I honestly couldn't tell much of a difference, 90% of isolation was coming from passive NC.
BTW, Etymotic is also making hearing protection earplugs, much better chance of saving your hearing at loud concert or construction site than any ANC in existence.

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Vamp898 said:

Not even remotely close. Headphones are significantly inferior to IEM, especially when it comes to correct and accurate reproduction of the original sound.

And speaker systems are even worse. Even an 40'000$ Speaker system in an perfectly well tuned room are worlds beyond Headphones and Earphones.

That people prefer Speaker and Headphones to IEM is _because_ they colour the sound and change it and make everything sound bigger than real life and wow and whatnot. But in terms of Monitoring, in "Playing the original Sound File as perfectly as possible", they are worse in every single aspect.

Click to expand...

Andrew_WOT said:

Stick fingers into your ears, this is how good passive NC can be. Add to that that there is also some sound coming out of IEMs drowning external noise even more.
Active NC on or off on AZ80 and I honestly couldn't tell much of a difference, 90% of isolation was coming from passive NC.
BTW, Etymotic is also making hearing protection earplugs, much better chance of saving your hearing at loud concert or construction site than any ANC in existence.

Click to expand...

Not so fat head said:

Really, so the Technices have ineffective NC?

Check this out, here’s why so much R&D is going in to TWS…. Follow the Money!

https://report.counterpointresearch.com/posts/report/Emerging_Tech/category:Hearables (TWS)#:~:text=Overview: The global TWS market,had the biggest Q...

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