IEM soundstage

[Kyron]

I read and hear a lot of comments about some IEMs having a great soundstage. Soundstage an is imaginary three-dimensional space created by the high-fidelity reproduction of sound in a stereo speaker or headphone. I'm not sure how IEM's can produce hight and depth. Are there any examples of IEMs that are particularly good at producing depth.

 

[Chromatischism]

Wouldn't you need virtualized reflections to create such an effect? Isn't that what Dolby, DTS, and Sony are doing?

 

[jae]

I would not agree with the general statement that IEMs have good soundstage, but they have the potential to. There are many phenomena that contribute to the sensation of soundstage or "space" within a recording apart from how it is produced. The very nature of drivers in your ear canal almost entirely negate interaction/reflections of sound with your pinna/body and other things in a typical room that could contribute to this effect.

However, one of the most significant things that contribute to giving a good or more natural sounding soundstage is frequency response, which is something that is well represented with the Harman studies (Harman curve for headphones). So despite the fact IEMs may not have the advantages of speakers or headphones in creating soundstage with more "natural" auditory/spatial cues, they can still be tuned to a favourable curve and this is sometimes easier to do with IEMs, especially in the bass/lower midrange region with low amounts of power due to occlusion of the ear canal. Compliance to a desirable curve in the lower octaves is extremely important when it comes to reproducing good soundstage, and most IEMs are not bass/midrange shy. So all of this means that it is very possible to have a better illusion of soundstage (in some aspects) with well tuned IEMs compared to poorly tuned headphones or even speakers because of the frequency response alone, even if all the other auditory cues are entirely absent.

I would say for the most part, people that report good soundstage with IEMs either a) just happen to be listening to well-produced recordings that have good, innate auditory soundstage cues within the content that work well with the isolation of the IEMs (much of the soundstage effect can come from the music itself) b) the IEM's frequency response is close to an ideal general response like Harman curve for example so it can have a broad appeal amongst many people c) the IEMs frequency response is coincidentally close to that individual's ideal based on their own unique HRTF/canal anatomy

 

[Kyron]

I would not agree with the general statement that IEMs have good soundstage, but they have the potential to. There are many phenomena that contribute to the sensation of soundstage or "space" within a recording apart from how it is produced. The very nature of drivers in your ear canal almost entirely negate interaction/reflections of sound with your pinna/body and other things in a typical room that could contribute to this effect.

However, one of the most significant things that contribute to giving a good or more natural sounding soundstage is frequency response, which is something that is well represented with the Harman studies (Harman curve for headphones). So despite the fact IEMs may not have the advantages of speakers or headphones in creating soundstage with more "natural" auditory/spatial cues, they can still be tuned to a favourable curve and this is sometimes easier to do with IEMs, especially in the bass/lower midrange region due to occlusion of the ear canal. Compliance to a desirable curve in the lower octaves is extremely important when it comes to reproducing good soundstage, and most IEMs are not bass/midrange shy. So all of this means that it is very possible to have a better illusion of soundstage (in some aspects) with well tuned IEMs compared to poorly tuned headphones or even speakers because of the frequency response alone, even if all the other auditory cues are entirely absent.

I would say for the most part, people that report good soundstage with IEMs either a) just happen to be listening to well-produced recordings that have good, innate auditory soundstage cues within the content that work well with the isolation of the IEMs (much of the soundstage effect can come from the music itself) b) the IEM's frequency response is close to an ideal general response like Harman curve for example c) the IEMs frequency response is coincidentally close the the individual's ideal based on their own individual HRTF/canal anatomy

Yes that is pretty much what I thought. And nowhere near just sense of depth that you get with good headphones or even KSC75s

 

[jae]

I don't use IEMs so can't help much but you can find a list of IEMs here and they are ranked in order of how well they fit they harman target out of the box: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/RANKING.md (scroll down to the "in-ear headphones" section). It could be a good place to start if you're looking for a purchase, especially if you don't want to fiddle around with EQ.

If you already have some type of IEM or access to one, you can look up it's frequency response and play with EQ. I would suggest that you tune them to harman IEM curve as a starting point and then experiment with the slope/intensity of the corrections to see how your preference deviates from it, or how it affects the soundstage of particular tracks, if at all. I would test with a variety of tracks and common music you listen to and with both poor and well-mixed/mastered tracks that have a lot of auditory spatial cues and also ones that have virtually none to see if a particular IEM provides what it claims or what you are looking for.

 

[Senior NEET Engineer]

EQ changes the soundstage. My Sony IER-M9's have good depth, but it's still a headphone.

 

[Genkishi569]

EQ changes the soundstage. My Sony IER-M9's have good depth, but it's still a headphone.

Agreed. I eq'd an iem that's extremely far from Harman to the Harman curve (+12-15 dB bass boost with a really slow taper to 100Hz, and giant treble roll off. It's a bassists monitor). Went from sounding underwater to a polar opposite airy open sound where the soundstage has actually "opened" up as the typical audiophile would say.

I find it strange how the new crop of reviewers separate sound stage as a detail that's not related to frequency response when, in my own experience from eqing, sound stage is, if I were to give a random ballpark figure, probably 80% frequency response.

 

[2M2B]

I think the Wide 3D sound is the IEM doing incidental binaural, The ER3XR i use does this to the point I had to check if DSP was on.