smallhero1 t1_iu37ka0 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 5:40 AM

Reply to comment by Bickster- in Honest question, did we hit peak headphone a while back? by Yammy_Lyfe

How is it possible that there can be so much innovation in tiny IEMs but so few in full sized headphones? I’m no engineer so I have no idea why this is but can someone explain?

TRX808 t1_iu3nj07 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 9:22 AM

Most of the IEM explosion is centered around Shenzen where the production time is very short to turn things around. They can buy off the shelf drivers (almost none of the drivers are proprietary), 3D print the shell, and keep prototyping without breaking the bank. Designing and producing a full sized headphone prototype is significantly more resource intensive.

Also I think many of these small IEM companies in Shenzen have learned from others and it allows them to churn out IEM's at a much faster pace because they have a lot of the basics down.

pocinTkai t1_iu3cwf5 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 6:49 AM

Well, you can't make a headphone flatter than flat. IEMs haven't been targeted to audiophiles in the past, so there were (/are) improvments to make in terms of audio quality. With oe-headphones you can just reinvent the wheel nowadays.

Kn0thingIsTerrible t1_iu3d1p7 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 6:51 AM

Precision sound quality on a small scale is exponentially more easy to reproduce than each relative size scale.

It’s a million more times more difficult to make a small scale speaker system than a high quality IEM.

oballzo t1_iu4ua9i wrote on October 28, 2022 at 3:43 PM

Completely disagree. You can DIY speakers, hell even design your own speakers if your knowledgable enough. And you don't need a $50000 rig to measure speakers. Just $100. You don't need to worry about fitment in every shape of ear possible.

It's not hard to design a decent speaker with low distortion. But it's extremely difficult to design a room with good accoustics. That's not up to the speaker designer though, ha! So the IEM designer has to think about your ears accoustical shape, but the speaker designer can ignore your rooms accoustical space.