What are your thoughts on the rise of planar-magnetic technology in the IEM world? Any other new trends you’re hoping to see in the future of IEM’s?

While some earbuds may advertise to be sleep safe, no actual doctor would ever recommend sleeping with anything in your ear for what I hope would be obvious reasons. At your own risk.

The first thing to consider is the interaction between impedance and sensitivity, to determine if a headphone would even benefit from an amplifier. In other words, are they difficult to drive, or how efficient are they? Manufacturers don’t purposely create difficult to drive headphones just to screw over consumers and make them spend more money, although they could do a better job of making a disclaimer of how best to drive their headphones. A lot of these issues arise from manufacturers not using a universal method of measurements or listing their specs in relevance to 1mw vs 1VRMS, which isn’t easy to translate 1:1.

One quote in reference to how amps change the sound of headphones: “The amps themselves shouldn’t change the sound signature of your headphones but give them the power to have a correct sound signature.” Certain parts of a song may sound recessed if the headphones lack power. It’s also why I believe that the bass is the most immediate part of the frequency to be noticeably different, because the low end frequencies require the most amount of power to move the diaphragm back and forth efficiently, compared to the higher end frequencies. If you’ve ever seen a speaker woofer shake and vibrate when that bass hits. When a not-so-efficient headphone is supplied sufficient power, for example, the bass often tends to tighten up and become punchier.

There’s a lot more other other technical jargon about amplifiers like total harmonic distortion (THD) that I won’t pretend to completely understand. But there’s tons of places you can read about it if you’re interested. You can also check out oratory1990’s page as he’s an audio-engineer that’s also well versed in electroacoustics.

There are a couple of websites that try to calculate and give a guideline as to how much power headphones may need based on their specs that you can try out.

https://www.headphonesty.com/headphone-power-calculator/

https://www.hear.audio/2019/06/01/headphone-power-calculator/

Looking at the specs, an Impedance of 50 ohm with a sensitivity of 92dB @ 1mW, I think these headphones would absolutely benefit from a powerful amp. As someone that previously owned a fostex headphone, the T60RP, when paired with an amp that could push 3-4 W, the bass quality improved, and the highs were less harsh. But something that equally benefited the headphones were changing the pads for something deeper like ones from dekoni. That would also have a significant impact on its tuning.

But if you’re on a budget, and you don’t want to have to spend all this money to get an amp and change out the pads, you might be better off selling/returning it and getting something easier to drive. The T50RP’s are popular with modders that want to tinker with these cans.

As someone who has the ie200. Very different. Tuning wise and build wise. Cheaper material. Cable is garbage, will def need an aftermarket cable. Super microphonic. Because of the tuning gimmick with the ie200, I had to opt for aftermarket eartips as well to get back the bass I lost. Unless you absolutely love modding, get your money back instead if that’s an option. The only positive thing I like about the ie200 is the comfort in your ear. But in that case, the comfort is the same as the ie300, 600, 900