BA IEM distortion

[ASRaddict]

I have been listening to the Thieaudio Oracle IEMs for the last 8 months and I think I am starting to notice distortion and am wondering if this is characteristic of BA drivers. I do not think that the IEMs are damaged and both ears seem to sound the same. It does depend somewhat on the track, with the older (70s to 90s) Hindi songs being particularly problematic.

One track that many of you may be familiar with is the opening announcement by Hugh Cherry (Live at Folsom, Johnny Cash) which sounds severely distorted (as if the signal has hit a limiter) when streaming from Amazon Music, Ultra HD.

Thoughts?

 

[Jimbob54]

I have been listening to the Thieaudio Oracle IEMs for the last 8 months and I think I am starting to notice distortion and am wondering if this is characteristic of BA drivers. I do not think that the IEMs are damaged and both ears seem to sound the same. It does depend somewhat on the track, with the older (70s to 90s) Hindi songs being particularly problematic.

One track that many of you may be familiar with is the opening announcement by Hugh Cherry (Live at Folsom, Johnny Cash) which sounds severely distorted (as if the signal has hit a limiter) when streaming from Amazon Music, Ultra HD.

Thoughts?

More likely the issue is with the recordings and the iem are revealing the flaws. If you have any other decent headphones, see if you can spot the same faults. And post links to the tracks so others can listen with some time guides as tone where and what glitches you hear.

 

[JanesJr1]

I have been listening to the Thieaudio Oracle IEMs for the last 8 months and I think I am starting to notice distortion and am wondering if this is characteristic of BA drivers. I do not think that the IEMs are damaged and both ears seem to sound the same. It does depend somewhat on the track, with the older (70s to 90s) Hindi songs being particularly problematic.

One track that many of you may be familiar with is the opening announcement by Hugh Cherry (Live at Folsom, Johnny Cash) which sounds severely distorted (as if the signal has hit a limiter) when streaming from Amazon Music, Ultra HD.

Thoughts?

I have balanced armature IEM's (Etymotic ER4XR) and listened to the Amazon cut you mentioned. It sounded completely un-problematic, other than that the speaker got a little too close to the mike a couple of times, which made his voice a bit sharp and sibilant. But nothing that seemed at all like the IEM was under any kind of strain.

As far as some kind of weakness characteristic of BA drivers, the only one I have encountered is that with the different Ety's I've owned, they seem to be highly resolving of detail, but at the penalty of some high-frequency glare. Also some weakness at the very low end. With each of them, I have to EQ down the high's, and boost the deep lows. I usually like the Oratory EQ as a starting point for my dynamic- and planar-driver headphones, but by contrast I find the Ety's too bright out of the box and too bright with the Oratory EQ.

But other than adjusting overall frequency response, I hear only high resolution, a great ability to separate instruments, and timbral accuracy with those particular BA drivers.

There seem to be multiple cuts of the Folsom recording on Amazon; did you check if different re-masters are involved, and perhaps one of them might be defective? (This has happened to me, albeit very rarely, on Amazon.)

I also hear distortion at my workplace, where there seems to be some intermittent EM interference that imparts a grainy, crinkly halo to the highs. But this only happens in that office, and doesn't affect the Ety's in particular. You might check on this if the IEM distortion seems to occur at one location in particular. Use the IEM's in a different location and with a different DAC and amp if possible to isolate the problem to the IEM's vs. the location or other parts of the signal chain.

Why do you think it might be a problem for BA drivers in general? Did you find a problem with more than one set of IEM's?

 

[ASRaddict]

More likely the issue is with the recordings and the iem are revealing the flaws. If you have any other decent headphones, see if you can spot the same faults. And post links to the tracks so others can listen with some time guides as tone where and what glitches you hear.

For what it is worth, I tried the 3 headphones that I have at home, apple earpods, google earpods (USB-C, first version), and the Thieaudio Oracle. Audio memory is terrible and the impedances are wildly different, so volume normalization is by ear only (and that is not very accurate). I used one earpiece of each of the headphones on each ear (and my ears are different hearing too and I can hear up to 14Khz as tested by the Peace UI, so this may be quite inaccurate), but the Apple and the Google headphones definitely have a different tonal balance and sound less chesty, compared to the Oracle on this track. They also had more of the reverb in the recording.

Regards

 

[ASRaddict]

I have balanced armature IEM's (Etymotic ER4XR) and listened to the Amazon cut you mentioned. It sounded completely un-problematic, other than that the speaker got a little too close to the mike a couple of times, which made his voice a bit sharp and sibilant. But nothing that seemed at all like the IEM was under any kind of strain.

Yes, that is my impression too, but when the speaker was close to the mic, the Oracle sounded more chesty (probably more accurate, and certainly not strained) compared to the other headphones I have at home

As far as some kind of weakness characteristic of BA drivers, the only one I have encountered is that with the different Ety's I've owned, they seem to be highly resolving of detail, but at the penalty of some high-frequency glare. Also some weakness at the very low end. With each of them, I have to EQ down the high's, and boost the deep lows. I usually like the Oratory EQ as a starting point for my dynamic- and planar-driver headphones, but by contrast I find the Ety's too bright out of the box and too bright with the Oratory EQ.

I use the Peace test interface to create EQ for my hearing, but the Oratory ones are great too. Your observation is very accurate, in my opinion. I too think that I am hearing more high freq in the Oracle compared to the other 2 headphones I have

But other than adjusting overall frequency response, I hear only high resolution, a great ability to separate instruments, and timbral accuracy with those particular BA drivers.

There seem to be multiple cuts of the Folsom recording on Amazon; did you check if different re-masters are involved, and perhaps one of them might be defective? (This has happened to me, albeit very rarely, on Amazon.)

I also hear distortion at my workplace, where there seems to be some intermittent EM interference that imparts a grainy, crinkly halo to the highs. But this only happens in that office, and doesn't affect the Ety's in particular. You might check on this if the IEM distortion seems to occur at one location in particular. Use the IEM's in a different location and with a different DAC and amp if possible to isolate the problem to the IEM's vs. the location or other parts of the signal chain.

I tried driving the Oracle with Qdelix, Dell Laptop and Apple Macbook Pro and the best for my hearing was the Dell Laptop. I doubt this is EM interference as it does not seem to depend on where I am listening to the track.

Why do you think it might be a problem for BA drivers in general? Did you find a problem with more than one set of IEM's?

Good question, this is my first attempt at IEM with BA drivers, so I cannot rule out "higher resolution" and "older recording issues" -

I will listen to a few modern recordings and see if there is any difference

Regards