IEM Cables. Please do not laugh, cos I sincerely hear a difference, contrary to expectations. Wish to explore WHY?

[krabapple]

Didn't need to read the article, as there is likely nothing new there. Now you can explain load dependency perhaps....

Erin of course isn't reporting anything new.
BAS member E. Brad Meyer wrote about the same effect of amp/speaker mismatch -- back in 1991

E. Brad Meyer writing about load conditions under which two amps will "sound different":
"The Amp/Speakers Interface, are your Loudspeakers turning your amp into a Tone Control?",
Meyer, E. Brad, Stereo Review, Jun 1991, pg 53-56.

Also been discussed to death before on ASR on more than one thread. For example

Will it never end?

 

[somebodyelse]

Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that last part.

View attachment 497305

Hoist by my own hyperbole! And memories of measuring interconnects ~1m, and only one leg. 3m of stock HD600 headphone cable out and back is 1.5R so still low enough not to be an issue for the vast majority of headphones and IEMs, and under £10.

 

[Jiraya369]

It's not exactly rocket science. We are considering 3 impedances: the output impedance of the amp, the impedance of the cable and the impedance of the load, connected in series. The amp's voltage will be divided between them. The impedances may or may not be variable within the audio frequency range. If none of the impedances vary within the audio range then the voltage division won't vary either, so there is no load dependency. If any of the impedances are less than about a tenth of the higher of the others at all frequencies then that impedance won't play a significant part in the load dependency.

Typically the cable impedance is mostly resistive, and much lower than the IEM impedance, so will have little to no effect on frequency response. Have you ever found a non-faulty cable with resistance >0.1R? I haven't.

you and i are normal and would call any non-flat cable faulty. But these other people call em "musical" and all that other nonsense.

My point was cables might change the sound if they're some esoteric audiophile stuff and cheap copper cables are reliable and good enough. You can take a look at all the 5000 dollar+ amps that have worse performance than a tiny trn black pearl to understand what i mean.

 

[solderdude]

I have encountered quite a few headphone cables that have a high resistance.
Some of them are even reaching 1.5ohm usually coiled cables, 3m cables exist that reach 1ohm.

One should realize that most (even the thicker cables) have very thin litze wires in them of just a few strands.
This is because headphone cables should be lightweight and supple and withstand bending and being pulled on.

Even the 1.7ohm ones won't be changing the tonal balance much, if at all simply because of Ohms law (voltage division).
Maybe some rare very low impedance few ohm headphones with a varying impedance could.

The only ones that could comply to this are most likely MA IEM's.

BUT where headphone cables can make a difference, at least the ones with relatively high resistance opposite the driver impedance, is when that cable is 3-wire.
The why is explained here:

Cables

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This matters as, while tonality is not changed, stereo imaging is and music usually is stereo and headphone users are often anal about 'imaging'.

This ONLY matters for 3-wire cables.

It does not matter for 4-wire cables.
Fortunately IEM cables are (as far as I can tell) always 4-wire all the way up to the 3.5mm connector.

This is where balanced headphone cables are in the advantage as they are always 4-wire so that won't be an issue for IEMs.