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blackrao t1_iy0bph5 wrote

Reply to comment by GZoST in why are the sundaras harder to drive even if it says 36 ohms? by csch1992

Its not hard to drive....if you think about it 94dB/mW means for you can get to 94dB with 1 mW of power....an iphone dongle can put in 33 mW into 32 ohm. at 85dB is avg listening level you want to listen at 8 hours before hearing loss occurs. Doing the math an iphone dongle can get you to 109dB with 32 mW, so 109-85 = 24 dB of headroom. All of this is very conservative math thats probably way too much headroom

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GZoST t1_iy10wqt wrote

As I said, there are use cases where you are OK with a low-powered source - and there are ones where you aren't.

For example:

I have a hearing imbalance so I reduce the right channel by 6 dB (quadruples power requirements) and I would run this using oratory1990's EQ settings, which in turn decreases volume by 7 dB. So that is a reduction in max volume to 96 dB.

With music with limited dynamic range 96 dB peak loudness is fine. So when listening to most pop or rock the Apple dongle would still work. But I also like to listen to recordings of symphonies at a level comparable to that in a concert hall. This means that momentary peaks in the music can go up to ~115 dB (average listening volume is much lower). Clearly the Apple dongle cannot provide the power required for this.

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