"These headphones/speakers sound better with more juice/current"??

[fire]

I recall reading amplifiers can be designed for high current capability and this is a more expensive design, so not standard. And thus, just looking at the back plate of an amplifier's stated Wattage into 4 or 8 Ohm rated speakers doesn't reveal everything about it's voltage:current ratio of performance.

Upthread (comment #32) I followed a link to Legendary Audio's (Ben Blish) "Damping Factor" where in 2001 wrote that: low resistance speakers can "...support higher current ...[& that] ... means ... amplifier can control them better. However, most amplifiers generate more distortion when they produce more current."

According to that writer an "... amplifier ... must ... supply ... current and not change the applied voltage ... f voltage changes in the process distortion is the result."

Which, to me, seems to indicate that current delivery in the context of each milli-second of voltage generated musical sound frequency is what allows for "better" sounding headphones. And, as that writer put it, low resistance speakers can "... support higher current..." Which I extrapolate as including what seem to be mostly low Ohm rated iem types of headphones.

EDIT: Sorry - all those later italics were unintentional & my formatting mistake

One way to cause that by saving costs is to have insufficient capacitance in the power supply. Not enough available energy in the DC side and the voltage will drop even though transistors would be able to push it. Large capacitors can be quite expensive.

That shouldn't be a cost issue for headphone amps though.

 

[ZolaIII]

A great example of what I whose talking about (in this case caused by bad quality part) that's easy to understand and warning to owners of such amplifiers (including very popular Aima one's).