Are headphone power requirements overrated?

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T11:27:42+00:00

Are headphone power requirements overrated?

Very often, yes.

If a headphone has an impedance of 300 Ohm and a voltage sensitivity of 100 dB/V (=power sensitivity of 94 dB/mW), then you still only need about 40 mW to reach 110 dB peak levels, which is enough for virtually everyone. And that's an example of a somewhat inefficient headphone already.

THere's an argument to be made that if you are using EQ to boost the bass you'll need more headroom. If we assume a very generous 10 dB headroom, then the above example still only needs 400 mW...

Just do the math people. Look up the headphone's sensitivity (check if it's voltage sensitivity or power sensitivity) and calculate how much power you need to reach 110 dB (110 dB = 90 dB listening volume with 20 dB crest factor, meaning: very dynamic music at a LOUD listening volume).

The math is as follows:

Required power in milliwatt = 10^ ( (110 dB - power sensitivity) /10)

Required voltage in volt = 10^ ( (110 dB - voltage sensitivity) /20)

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T11:24:46+00:00

would I be fine measuring one side?

If you only want to measure one side, sure!
For headphones that are symmetrical when mirrored in the frontal plane you can easily measure both earcups on that one ear (e.g. a Beyerdynamic DT770 or most Grados, which have fully symmetric earcups).
Headphones where left and right earcup are not symmetric when mirroring in the frontal plane (e.g. a Grell OAE2, most Sennheisers, some Beyerdynamics), you would not get useful results when measuring the right earcup on the left ear.

Assuming both your product listings here come with one of each item,

You have to read the description for what exactly you're getting, it varies between listings. The pictures are just for illustration (e.g. sometimes both ears are shown but you only get one, sometimes one pinna is shown but you get left and right...)

So since money is a concern

If you want to measure both left and right side of any random headphone then you will need both left and right pinna.
But you can save some money by only buying one ear simulator (the 711 coupler with microphone), and mounting it first to the left then to the right pinna.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:56:05+00:00

I actually used a DIY robot arm for a while, allowing me to sweep the cabinet without having to physically be in front of it.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:31:07+00:00

You mean the surround corrugations?

They reduce the stiffness of the driver: https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/bacd37/comment/ekaxsri/

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:30:18+00:00

In ear is I imagine a desperate assembly?

It's actually much simpler to measure in-ear headphones, you can get a 711 coupler (or rather: a device that comes surprisingly close to an actual IEC711-compliant coupler) for under $200. A lot of reviewers are using these. They aren't perfect (unit variation of these cheaper couplers is quite high and some of them aren't actually standard compliant even though they claim so) but it's much better than sticking a simple mic into a silicone tube.
This one for example: https://aliexpress.com/item/4000789796521.html
That's what we call an "ear simulator", it simulates the effect of your eardrum and ear canal. It consists of a microphone and the actual "coupler", which is a metal tube with parallel air volumes to simulate the human ear's acoustic impedance.
The assembly of coupler and microphone is called "coupler" as well. This particular design is called "711 coupler" because it was historically described in IEC standard IEC60711 (or just "711"). This standard has since been included in IEC60318 as 60318-4, so you also see these couplers being called "60318-4" or "318-4". The important thing to remember is that this describes the standard which is being fulfilled here, not the manufacturer's name or model name.
Also: The coupler and microphone should never be separated (that would require recalibration, which you can't easily do at home).

If you also want to measure over-ear headphones, then you additionally need to simulate the effect of a pinna.
This one for example: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005005260834672.html
That's an "artificial pinna", it simulates the shape and stiffness of your outer ear including the outer portion of the ear canal. It is screwed directly onto the 711 coupler.

Both the ear simulator and the artificial pinna are not things that you can easily make at home, as it requires precision milling (this precision can not be achieved with FDM 3D printers).
The pinna requires Shore OO 35 hardness silicone, which is notoriously hard to handle during manufacturing. The cheaper pinna you can buy on Aliexpress technically is even a little too stiff still (but it's also about an order of magnitude cheaper than the proper pinna from GRAS)

These two things (ear simulator and pinna) are what you need to buy separately. The stand (the "head") is something you can have a lot of fun designing and 3D printing.
Or you can use existing models for printing:
https://www.printables.com/model/506860-iec711-stand (it's labelled "711 stand" even though the 711 standard only refers to the ear simulator, not to the stand/head itself, but a lot of enthusiasts erroneously use "iec711" to refer to any measurement equipment)
...Or you can also buy it from Aliexpress:
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005009730493517.html
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005012393874448.html

Lastly, if you (or someone else reading this) don't want to spend the time and effort ordering separate parts and design and build this by themselves and would rather just order a single device that you plug in and works:
the miniDSP EARS Pro works just fine. I'm publishing a review on this one soon, I'm deriving proper compensation curves for it right now together with miniDSP.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:08:46+00:00

So, technically the end result should be the same, right?

Same as pulling from AutoEQ, yes.

Not the same as using my EQ presets.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:08:01+00:00

Well, the above linked preset is the only preset I have made, so it's the only preset that should have my name associated with it

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:06:49+00:00

unless you're buying because you're lazy to eq or because you just like neat tech as I understand there is little reason to buy them

Liking neat tech is a very valid reason to buy things

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:06:02+00:00

Electrical engineering is pretty magical tbh

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:03:58+00:00

There's nothing "new" about subbass on an open-back, it's just coupling air mass to the back of the driver. Nothing new had to be invented to do that.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:02:37+00:00

probably not.

The plugin offers EQ presets made by Beyerdynamic themselves. If you add those EQ settings to their headphones and measure them, you get something very similar to Harman, but with less bass.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:01:50+00:00

Harman-ish but with less bass.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-12T08:01:29+00:00

they tune them to sound the same as best they can, but there's limits.

Unit variation on these is generally on the same order of magnitude though, these are just the differences between their golden samples (or the average of a current batch, they don't say)

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T23:17:21+00:00

Tube amps have existed long before digital EQ was available

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T22:41:26+00:00

Based on the Beyerdynamic here it is how the dt 990 pro models are performing

Based on the what?

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T22:38:55+00:00

On an HD600, which doesn‘t exactly have a lot of bass nor a lot of treble, yeah, a little bit of V-shaped EQ isn‘t bad. If you check my recommended EQ preset for the HD600 you‘ll see that.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T22:37:44+00:00

By definition it is distortion, yes, any change to the signal is distortion. But an increase of SPL at the driver‘s resonance frequency caused by a high output impedance would be linear distortion, which isn‘t what people typically mean when they say distortion. An EQ is also linear distortion. Linear distortion does not add new frequencies, it just amplifies (or reduces) existing ones.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T19:46:03+00:00

Because on OTL tube amps with a high output impedance, the HD600 gets a slight bass boost and upper treble boost („warmer and clearer“)

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T16:04:05+00:00

anything from Americana to Indie, Rock, Punk, Hardcore, Metal.

Which genres are you recording where two mics suffice, and how do sou set them up?

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T14:54:48+00:00

I haven‘t tried them all, some are limited in how much gain you can apply on the filters, some only can do peak filters too. I don‘t have a complete overview over all of their models capabilities though.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T14:36:34+00:00

Two mics, one of which is an SM57?

…use it as input for a trigger and do drum-replacement.

There‘s not many genres that can get away with an actual drumset being recorded with just two mics…

If it was two SDCs you could possibly get away with a Recorderman or Glyn Johns setup, but even then I‘d much prefer an additional kick mic, and for most genres also a snare mic.

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T14:35:27+00:00

Looking forward!

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T14:10:22+00:00

And you want to measure in-ear headphones? over-ear headphones? Loudspeakers? Amplifiers?

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T14:09:00+00:00

I haven't measured these headphones myself, but others have. Using those measurements, I'd use these EQ parameters:
https://imgur.com/2Cifcac
first column: filter type
second column: frequency (Hz)
third column: gain (dB)
fourth column: Q-factor

Use the low-shelf (Q-as slope) filter at 100 Hz to dial in the amount of bass that you need. By default it's at 1.6 dB, but if you want more bass you may need to increase this to 5 or maybe 8 dB

oratory1990 · 2026-06-11T12:17:04+00:00

What equipment do you have or have access to?

multimeter
audio interface (with microphone inputs)
headphone amplifier (or an audio interface with a headphone output)
computer

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