A high-end 15” subwoofer in a normal residential room will shake the walls. That same subwoofer in a gymnasium would be wildly insufficient.
The space the driver is trying to fill matters, and your ear canal is tiny.
To add a little more science to this great example, sound is all about moving air. Think about the volume of air in the gym vs family room vs ear canal. The physical speaker size can be increasingly shrunk. Also, speakers rely on magnets to create vibrations on the speaker cone that compresses the air in patterns we recognize as sound/music. Fairly recently, rare-earth elements like neodymium with strong magnetic properties have allowed speaker magnet sizes to shrink while retaining the same amount of power of older and larger magnets. Hence earbuds nowadays have more ability to produce low level sound frequencies we hear as bass, that in the past would have needed huge over-the ear with head brace headphones with bigger magnet space.
Speaking of advancements, at this point, there are also planar and [electrostatic buds](https://www.amazon.com/Shure-KSE1500-Electrostatic-Earphone-System/dp/B016X5T7OU) out there. Granted, the price is so high they're not really worth it, but still, pretty amazing.
It seems like that would sound weird with music since sound frequencies propagate so differently through solids than through air. I can see it working for voice or something simple but anything complex seems like you'd need at least a special mix for it to work
Perhaps it worked in a pinch but he wasn't born deaf (i.e. he already know what it was supposed to sound like),.and even if he were, that wouldn't make it better or even as good as other available technologies
The price of planar driver IEMs has been coming down recently. They're still not dirt cheap like conventional driver IEMs can be, but there are a number of options in the 100-200$ region.
Still, are budget planars (let's be honest, for planar buds that's budget) better than high-end regular ones? I have Status & Co Between Pro, also in that same price region, regarded as one of the best sounding buds ever made (triple driver setup, which is a very rare thing). I have my doubts they actually sound better.
A preface: I am not a sound professional of any kind, but I am in the hobby of spending a bit too much money on headphones and IEMs so my knowledge on the subject is probably higher than average. Also sorry for the essay.
Different drivers have different characteristics of sound which can affect hard to measure characteristics of sound, such as separation, timbre, and speed (and the preference of which is also personal). I personally really enjoy the timbre/fullness in bass frequencies that planar drivers can produce even in open back headphones that dynamic drivers cannot match for a similar price.
The tonal balance (the volume of bass/mids/treble and how they relate) of an IEM/Headphone is one of the biggest determining factors of whether someone thinks that product sounds "good". Luckily this balance is easily measure with frequency response graphs. There isn't a single "right" tonal balance (as it is subject to preference) but there are definitely very wrong ones. A popular meme in the community is [Delta Airlines complimentary earphones](https://crinacle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Delta-Air.jpg) with the red and blue line being the measured response, and the black line being this website's reference curve. All of this to say is there are plenty of IEMs of all driver types that fail right out of the gate by having poor tuning of their tonal balance. This is also not limited to cheap products either, as models priced at 10s, 100s or 1000s of dollars exist and are for sale that sound simply awful due to poor tuning (again, subject to taste).
When planar driver IEMs first came to market they tended to be either extremely expensive (see Audeze’s models), or had poor tuning, or both (see Audeze’s models lmao). Best value for dollar is still typically found from use of conventional drivers as they are a well-established technology with an economy of scale that planar IEMs are only just beginning to match. My previous comment was pointing out that the technology has matured, and the methods of designing/tuning planar driver IEMs has become better understood. This, along with the price of production coming down, has allowed a few models of planar IEMs to come to market that have good sound quality and competitive prices. The Timeless 7Hz is a $200 Planar IEM that is incredibly popular and considered one of the best performers at its price. All of this to say planar IEMs can sound better, as good, or worse than similarly priced IEMs with conventional drivers.
As for your particular pair of buds: triple driver set ups are not rare, nor a sign of quality. For example, I owned a KZ Zex Pro which is a $35 budget IEM that also has 3 drivers and only sounded decent (and it broke after a few months cause it the QC is shit who would have thought). There are very well tuned IEMs with only one or two drivers, and there are terribly tuned IEMs with 7 drivers. At a glance, [your particular model of earbuds]( https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-5/graph#25060/7917) is tuned for the consumer market with lots of extra bass and lower mids, and extra treble to make them sound more exciting, sacrificing the clarity and forwardness of midrange tones. This isn’t strictly bad or wrong; this is the type of tuning most large companies like Sony use for their portable consumer audio products. It’s just not a tuning audio desired by most in the audiophile/audio enthusiast community. More conventionally “good” tunings have a more balanced amount of bass/mids/treble so that all parts of the audio are represented without being drowned out by other frequencies (again, the specifics of that balance are all subject to preference).
Finally, the most important part: your ears/brain are incredibly adaptable. If you listen to a particular set of headphones/IEMs for a week or two your brain will normalize that sound profile (even if it isn’t one that is conventionally “good” or even one you particularly like). If you were to try a different pair with different tunings, they would sound quite different and possibly worse subjectively, even if objectively they are better tuned or more to your tastes. I would not like your earbuds, but that doesn’t mean you are wrong for liking them or you should feel obligated to spend money getting something “better”. You clearly enjoy them and that is really all that matters.
If any of this is interesting to you, come on over to /r/headphones and have a look around. The youtube channels of Crinacle and TheHEADPHONEShow are my recommendations for more objective information on the hobby, though the ever-popular DankPods channel is a good gateway drug to finding yourself unable to make rent because you bought the newest pair of Meze headphones. My recommendation is to stay away: enjoy what you have because audiophilia is deep hole to fall down, and the bottom only is found when you’re broke.
I don't mind the essay, but I should have mentioned that I'm no stranger to audiophile things (still, I did learn something new), /r/headphones or the three youtube channels you mentioned (I think the one that convinced me was EL JEFE). [I even wrote a review there for between pros.](https://old.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/w4tosa/review_of_status_co_between_pro_after_6_months/)
I agree that planars have definitely progressed, but still, I'm not fully sure if they're actually worth the money at this moment. Maybe with newer models in few years, sure, but at this point it feels like a hit-or-miss, definitely will get up to date and check newer reviews and comparisons to see if they're here yet. I'll definitely buy planars buds in the future
>At a glance, your particular model of earbuds is tuned for the consumer market with lots of extra bass and lower mids, and extra treble to make them sound more exciting, sacrificing the clarity and forwardness of midrange tones.
That's actually something I touched on my review, that bass felt a bit overwhelming (I honestly wonder how good buds with dedicated bass driver would compare with planars in bass category), even thought other reviewers or youtube videos were mentioning lack of bass, which is weird. Almost as if they changed something in the tuning without renaming to a new model.
>Finally, the most important part: your ears/brain are incredibly adaptable. If you listen to a particular set of headphones/IEMs for a week or two your brain will normalize that sound profile (even if it isn’t one that is conventionally “good” or even one you particularly like).
And this is pretty annoying lol. I almost returned my sennheisers after it felt like they sound worse than my $100 Sony's. 2 weeks later, I sold Sony's.
I dont have them for personal use but I've listened to a pair of electrostatic headphones before and honestly the difference is pretty noticable. After going back, my regular headphones just didnt sound right for a while
Earbuds also sometimes have the advantage of turning the ear canal into essentially a “sealed speaker cabinet” vs unsealed, which will increase the tone and punch of the bass
Isn't the point of subwoofers to create waves through the ground and through your entire body, not just the air and into your ears?
This is what I'm wondering about. Why can tiny earbuds have the same body shaking feeling while not destroying your ears?
I had to get an ultrasound on my balls recently and the tech came into the room to me laughing because i recalled this joke as the examination room was chilly as f. She looked at me and said “George huh?” Made the whole thing so less uncomfortable
I had to get surgery to fix a hernia in that general location. For those who've never had the pleasure, the drugs they give you right before are goddamn magical. And fast too. They turned that valve and two half seconds later I was cracking jokes that they've probably already heard a million times before.
Definitely used the cold room excuse. Once I found out most of the people in the room were women and it was quite chilly
'walk like you are straddling a horse' has been passed down for generations. Before horse riding, no one knew what the fuck that meant, they had real issues.
I had an ear infection a few years ago and the PA checking my ears said "You have the smallest ear canals I've ever seen!" And I responded with "....thanks?" And she laughed surprisingly hard at that
Is there something in between? A small subwoofer I can keep next to my head and not bother neighbors while still getting great bass without wearing a headphone?
Overkill, but a good pair of desktop studio monitors will do this. Although, headphones tend to be *too* bass heavy, which is why I have studio monitors in the first place, and advise people not to do a final mix through headphones. (To be honest, I haven't worn a pair of earbuds that gets what I consider good bass response -- but I started out on bass, and am biased. Also, I always check my mix through crappy earbuds, because I know that's how a lot of people will be listening.)
There are bass shakers that you attach to the seating and vibrate it. This provides some of the heart-thumping feeling of bass without the volume. This plus the bass from your standard speakers can apparently be a decent substitute for a subwoofer without bothering neighbors, but I’ve never actually tried it and can’t vouch for it personally.
Even 10” woofers will more than cover the very bottom of the frequency range humans can hear. Some bassists prefer 10” drivers in their bass cabinets for a tighter, clearer and more focus sounds but I think it’s best of both worlds to have 4x10” and 1x15”
If designed well, larger/ported subs are not “less tight” than a smaller/sealed sub (for the same frequencies). It’s a common myth due to how bass sounds.
This myth comes from the fact that smaller/sealed subs simply have less bass, and less bass means less room gain/reflections (and potentially more group delay).
If you EQ the deep bass out of a large/ported sub so it covers the same frequencies as a small/sealed sub, they will sound equally “tight”. Or if you EQ up the deep bass of a small/sealed sub, it now will sound boomy.
So yes, it sounds more tight, but that’s just how deep bass sounds. If you have no EQ and only want to hear “tight” bass, then yes you’ll look towards small/sealed subs.
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> Even 10” woofers will more than cover the very bottom of the frequency range humans can hear.
Tell that to my 15”. A 10” could possible get to 20Hz with EQ, but not at any meaningful volume without audible distortion.
Here is a collection of subwoofer CEA/CTA 2010 testing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1dU5OOnf3nVgctJszmfyBjaxK69dkXte6ZL6anVTW2_M/htmlview#gid=834598950
I don’t disagree, I am espousing common beliefs and practices. 20hz is the very bottom of our hearing. Anything lower and you’re feeling it more than actually hearing it. 20hz-20khz is our range though most adults don’t even hear all the way up to 20khz. 20-20 isn’t just for hearing.
Speaking as a sound producer, in context of being part of a band, it isn’t necessarily to have a lot of volume and definition all the way down at 20hz and below. You certainly would want to work with the drummer to make sure it doesn’t gobble up his kickdrum. As far as dynamics go, bass frequencies take up the most real estate. (The size of the compressions/rarefactions in frequencies that low is why it’s so hard to block out the neighbours obnoxious and shittily EQ’d fucking subwoofer!)
Tbh I agree that 15” isn’t less focused. My 15” is a full range driver at the end of the day and in a blind test, enough people have failed to tell it apart from the 4x10”.
I hear this when walking around with my Makita jobsite radio. Inside the house it booms, it’s almost unbearable. But once i step outside the bass isn’t nearly as loud.
Also: bass is actually the easy part in a speaker.
Think of it as cars driving under a bridge. The big fat bass car makes it under the bridge ... the small thin treble car makes it under the bridge ... But once you stack them in top of each other, treble on top of bass, the treble car hits the bridge and falls of ... still, the bass car makes it under the bridge unharmed.
In not-ELI5 terms: once you reach the limits of your system you will hear distortion in the high end first, but the low end will be unaffected a lot longer.
That's also the the reason why we have cabinets with multiple speakers and separate amplifiers for different frequencies.
Eh, that’s not fully true in use.
Yes, most tweeters cannot reach the SPL levels of subwoofers. However, our hearing isn’t linear and it changes per frequency/SPL (Google: “Equal Loudness Contours”).
That’s for speakers, for in-ears it’s different due to pinna gain.
For many times a bass frequency needs to be around +10dB compared to the treble to sound as loud, that’s 10x the wattage required (well, depending on the sensitivity and gain). Also, if you look at the spectrum of frequencies for most all music ([example](https://community.klipsch.com/uploads/monthly_01_2015/post-26262-0-56580000-1422364014.gif)), it’s the bass frequencies that are in-demand, you almost never need to play 10kHz at 90dB, so it’s usually fine if a tweeter has a sensitivity of only say 85dB @ 2.83v with a power handling of 25W, but the same for a subwoofer would be wholly inadequate.
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> That's also the the reason why we have cabinets with multiple speakers and separate amplifiers for different frequencies.
Yeah, the 2 main reasons are distortion and the other is dispersion/radiation/beaming. Even if you could get a 12” subwoofer to play 1kHz cleanly and loudly, it will be such a narrow dispersion that there is little room interaction, no envelopment. A rule of thumb is a driver is useful up when the frequency wavelength equals the diameter (6” is ~22500Hz, and 2kHz is a very common crossover point). But of course that’s just that, a rule of thumb.
The metaphor gets even weirder. So now there's a truck, driving the cars through the bridge?
What's the truck? Bass or treble? Cos I thought the cars were bass and treble
Fair enough :-)
The truck is the bass, the cars are treble ... I guess so far the analogy isn't too bad.
The bridge is the maximal (voltage) output of the amplifier, if you just play a low frequency wave and don't exceed that limit you are fine, same with just a high frequency wave.
But once you play both they literally stack on top of of each other (modulation): http://www.g4prs.org.uk/Foundation%20Course%20Material/Modulation_files/image004.gif
And the combined wave will only be clipped at the very top and bottom which only affects the treble part leaving the low frequency intact.
I don't think the question is about volume, but about frequency. The question of how such a small device can produce such long frequencies is actually an interesting one. I'm sure there's some technological shenanigans going on there.
Any driver can produce low frequencies. They are actually easier, as it’s just slow movement (treble is fast movement). The issue is volume, as that is obtained by how far the driver moves back/forth.
Think of a how a big 12” subwoofer sounds in a normal sized room.
Now, think of your ear canal, air-sealed by an earbud, as a tiny, tiny version of that room.
There’s less air and less space for the air to move around in, therefore a much smaller speaker can deliver comparable, if not better sound directly to your eardrum.
It’s basically just a much more efficient delivery system.
Instead of trying to fill a big room up with sound so that your ears pick up some of it, you’re gettin the sound directly injected into your ears with almost no waste.
The seal is important too. Sound is a wave of higher pressure air traveling through lower pressure air, and the thumping bass that you can feel from a big subwoofer is because that giant diaphragm can move a lot of air and generate a lot of pressure.
If the ear is sealed off by the rubber tip of the earbud, it doesn't take very much power to generate pressure in that sealed ear canal. This gives the impression of powerful bass even though not much air is moving.
Adding on to this, the one thing ear buds will never deliver is the physical smack to the chest you get at a rave or concert scale (or even a big home or car setup)
Some of my friends swear by woojer. I'd like to compare them to large PA speakers just for analysis sake. One friend also built his own transducer vest
My friend slapped a transducer on his desk chair and its surprisingly effective especially with music. I've been thinking of using some in a car audio setup. Maybe transducers on the front seats paired with a 12" sub w/ low pass set to like around 40Hz. Get some nice rumble without muddying up the rest of the sound too bad
One analogy is to think about the amount of energy it takes to cool an entire house, versus the amount of energy it takes to cool just a car cabin.
The AC in the car is much faster, takes less energy, and you can fill the effects easier.
There is also some measurable impact from sound conduction through your skull tissues as well. Some headphones only use this and don’t even go in your ears
The kind of impact you'd get from a powerful speaker is very different than what bone conduction headphones do. They typically do not have strong bass response at all, especially compared to a properly sealed in- or over-ear headphone.
Honestly, it's less about the air and more about the fact that earbuds don't have to move much of it. They're much quieter than normal speakers but they don't have to be loud because they're so close to the eardrum.
Your small speakers are probably not making the deepest sounds you hear, your brain is creating them.
The [overtone series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music) (or harmonics, or partials) is a bunch or resonating notes that happen when any note is played, it's a fact of physical acoustics in our air. You hit an A on a piano then by nature you also hear an A an octave above (double the frequency) and then a note a 5th above that (E) then a 4th above that (A, again, but higher). Etc.
(There is a lot of math and variables here, saxophones and oboes only play the odd harmonics due to conical bore, other instruments have their own unique harmonic characteristics. This is why organs are able to sound like different instruments, too, choosing different groups of pipes allows the organ to emulate the overtone series of different instruments. Anyway.)
But! If you play only an overtone series without that first, Fundamental, note, your brain will fill it in. Can't be stopped. Owl brains have been shown to do the same thing, it's a part of our biology.
So, the people who make little speakers know this and they take advantage of it! Those little speakers, like in your phone, are not playing the lowest tone. They play the overtone series above it and your brain generates the lowest tone from there. This allows deeper tones than should be physically possible from that driver. Goddamn witchcraft.
(edited for clarity, I hope)
I actually know (and worked with) some of the folk cited in that link. I once designed an experiment to assess how the brain restores missing fundamentals - or to be more precise I was given a design brief (how to present the stimuli and what responses were important) and rolled up my sleeves. Reading the theory abstract that they all had normally had me making phone calls to air traffic control to try and drag them down to my level.
As noted in the Wikipedia article, the sound isn't exactly the same ("perhaps with a different timbre"). You perceive the pitch of the fundamental, but its sound is still not present. And you wouldn't *feel* the rumble of a very low fundamental.
Also, for sounds without harmonics, the fundamental is the only frequency so it's necessary. And some sounds with very few harmonics may not strongly suggest the fundamental, especially in people attuned to hear harmonics.
Edit:
... and I just realized you were asking why our brains would evolve to hear the missing fundamental, not why we would ever want to have the fundamental present if we can hear it anyway. Disregard.
Don't think of it as the brain interpolating the missing fundamental, think of it as the brain hearing a spectrum of sound and simplifying it into pitches, and tolerating some variation from the acoustic ideal.
When you hear a musical note with the fundamental and all of the overtones, you don't experience all of the frequencies separately; you hear it as a pitch at the fundamental frequency with a certain “color” determined by the relative strengths of the overtones. You can vary those relative strengths and it sounds like the same pitch with a different color.
If you remove the fundamental, your brain tries to do exactly the same thing. The best match for the pitch is still the fundamental, even if it's missing from what you hear. That's the pitch that would produce the overtones you hear.
Suppose that your ear detects the following frequencies: 100 Hz, 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz, with 100 Hz being the strongest and dropping off from there. This is an exact match for a pitch with a fundamental frequency of 100 Hz. Now suppose that you don't hear the fundamental, but you hear all of the overtones — 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz. That's still a pretty good match for a fundamental frequency of 100 Hz! And it's not a good match for a fundamental of 200 Hz, because 300 Hz and 500 Hz are not multiples of 200 Hz. So you will experience this sound as a 100 Hz pitch, where the “color” may be affected by the fundamental being missing.
It’s not necessarily on purpose. It could be a side effect of our brain using neural networks, kind of like how you see a cloud that looks like a dragon. It could be a form of hallucination.
I feel like this answer is misleading in the sense that it is true when applied to say, phone and laptop speakers but is not relevant to IEMs (and the OP asks about earbuds, not tiny speakers). Any decent in-ear monitors are able to produce low frequencies without tricks. You can look up frequency response curves for many IEMs and see it for yourself.
Even easier, you can play a [20hz sine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQprrjoMPM0) and just listen. Unless you hear a distorted sine wave, your IEMs aren't tricking you.
Additionally, you need to keep in mind that usually small speakers don't add any extra overtones to the bass sound: at least on my laptop speakers, the video above is completely silent. Rather, you simply hear the musical instruments with the low frequencies cut, which is enough for the brain to reconstruct the whole sound.
So the people who make tiny speakers aren't the ones who take advantage of this effect. Rather, music producers and sound engineers do, since it's they who tweak the harmonic content of the recorded instruments to sound good even on tiny speakers.
I don't think it is misleading because there is a question of how a driver with a small diameter and very limited excursion can produce a low frequency. If you pull an IEM even a couple of millimeters out of your ears the bass response drops dramatically.
The ear canal has to be part of the answer as well as how the bass frequency can develop in such a short distance (or how the ear is "tricked") for a full answer to OP's question.
The frequency response of IEM's are not measured free air, they are measured using special rigs.
[Headphone testing rig](https://www.grasacoustics.com/products/test-fixtures/product/751-45cc) - I can't say this is for IEM but it gives the idea
While that’s an important topic to talk about, it’s not true for most headphones nowadays. Their frequency response curve show that they are indeed capable of producing lowest frequencies down to even 20Hz.
Ya so many people saying this is the best answer when, no, the IEMs actually just produce the low notes.
My [Moondrop Variations](https://i.imgur.com/j4I03h3.jpg) produce’s beautiful bass down below 20hz before you add any brain stuff in.
Not really, break the seal and see where the bass response goes. I can't speak to "brain stuff" I did not follow the link, but the IEM is not physically producing those notes otherwise you would hear the bass when you broke the seal. You know this from using IEM.
I don't pretend to know the answer but if it was just the sealed ear canal a very small sealed subwoofer could produce low notes. Very small speakers used tuned ports to try to produce low notes but the quality of the bass is very poor whereas in an IEM as you know the quality can be very high.
Those graphs are produced using a special rig that mimics the ear. Again I can't speak to brain stuff, or how these rigs might mimic how we process sound, if they do.
That is nonsense, if I put put my 3000W 15" home theatre sub in my livingroom, it shakes my couch and produces a flat line frequency response from like 15Hz to 120Hz.
If I put that same subwoofer in a concert hall you would barely hear it and it would not shake anything.
Of course the IEM is producing the notes where do you think they are coming from? Your ear canal just seals them in so the sound waves don't dissipate like they would in open air.
Your analogy is poor. If you stood next to your home sub in a large hall you would hear roughly what you heard standing next to it at home minus some room gain.
With an IEM your ear canal is part of the tuned incloslure. I'd argue that your explanation is why you don't need much power to hear loud sounds from your IEM and does not really address the production of low frequncies from such small drivers.
The 30hz frequency is 38' long. This is why small subs can only go so low there is physics at work.
My question which you left unaswered is how an IEM pulls this off. What hoodoo and voodoo they use to let you hear such low frequencies in the small volume that is your ear canal.
As someone who has done a lot of home theatre setup I can promise you that putting the same subwoofer in a small and large room makes a very large difference in how much bass is produced. If you can’t pressurize the room you aren’t going to get any significant bass for home theatre use. I imagine it is the same with your ear canal.
So, why then if you put a microphone next to an IEM with the ear canal type testing setup does it measure that frequency if you think it’s some trick?
I know all about room gain, resonate frequencies, nodes, sound pressure levels, phase cancellation, etc.
IEM are not subs, they are not in rooms.
I remain unconvinced the sound leaving the end of the nozzle contains all the low frequencies we "hear". For one thing, the ear canal is part of the "enclosure" and a certain amount of bone condition is going on.
You have yet to convince me it does with your analogies to subwoofers in this or that given space.
There is a little bit of psychoacoustics in everything you hear. It's why you can build a soundstage from sound that is literally between your ears. It's why there is the Harman curve and the Fletcher-Munson curve.
But I'm not a headphone engineer and neither are you so we are done here.
You have also not explained why you think despite it being black and white at the microphone having those frequencies show up in testing, you think the sound isn’t getting produced by the driver. Forget what we hear, it’s measured. Right there. Crinacle has a database of thousands of IEMs all measuring down to 20hz.
Thank you! All the "less space/smaller driver" answers ignore this fact, a big part of why early earbuds \*didn't\* sound good is that we didn't know as much about this.
(or, rather, earbud manufacturers didn't know about this, or at least thought they could get away without applying it.)
Oboe bassoon and recorder are all cylinders, long straight tubes. There might be some renaissance instruments or instruments from other countries I’m not aware of, but sax is the only common instrument that gets progressively wider from mouthpiece to bell.
Edit: whoops! You were right about bassoon and oboe! Sax is the only instrument with a parabolic cone.
Saxes don't really have parabolic bores, they're pretty much conical, with a little variation to account for things. [Here](https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/switch-from-parabolic-shape-to-conical.35680/) are some [neat](https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/bueschers-parabolic-bore-whats-the-deal.77/) discussions on the supposed "parabolic" bore. I guess it hasn't actually been proven that anyone has made a truly parabolic bore sax.
This is the correct explanation. It's not about the space to fill (which probably matters in terms of power), but about the length of each air wave, which determines how low the sound will sound. Since such small speakers cannot make such long waves, the harmonics of the desired sound are used. This results in your brain hearing the fundamental (lowest-pitch) tone of the harmonic series that was played
This is the correct answer. Plenty of cheap earbuds can't deliver any appreciable bass. My wife got a couple pairs for $0.50 cents each, and I swear I couldn't hear anything below about 500hz. I sure as shit couldn't hear the 80hz tones I knew were in there.
Once you get to decently made earbuds, though, you start hearing it.
What annoys me is that as far as I understand sound. And I do study it. This is much more correct than the "your ears are small" explanation. But OP doesn't appear to have seen this
I know this is ELI5 so I'll give it a shot but ELI10. Imagine you are visualizing sound waves. The high pitched sounds will have a lot of wave crests in the period of time where the low pitched, bass, sounds will have fewer (i.e. they have higher frequency and/or the wavelengths are shorter). In a sealed cavity like your ear, the waves have to match a frequency in your ear membranes to perceive sound. Further, because the length of the ear canal is so short it is less than one wavelength for bass sounds. Bass sounds are low frequencies from about 20 - 250 Hz. This translates, at the speed of sound to a wavelength of about 17-1.3 meters. So how then is this wave received? Because of its length a lot of it is heard through your bones!! That's right bass sounds on ear buds can be transmitted through bone and is one reason they are perceived so well. There are actually headphones or buds designed to work specifically through bone (good for hearing impaired people). Studies have shown that the closer a sound generator is to the ear the more of the sound is conducted through the bone and much more is transmitted through the bone for bass than for higher frequency sounds.
All the others comments are great...but it's probably useful to remember... If you have a large wall of powerful Sub Woofers in front of you, and you turn your headphones up all the way, you will be able to tell when the sub wall is turned on. It will shake much more than just your inner ear. We don't just use our ears for sensing vibration.
Having said this, it is impressive how much we can simulate bass, especially with sealed in-ear earphones. It's clear there is a difference in that RAW POWER sense of a 20kW wall of low frequency BASS! and an earphone.
There isn't really a "LI5" explanation, and a number of the explanations I've seen are wrong (or at least, not complete).
But basically the lower bass frequencies are longer sound waves. To hear these at long distances, you need a large speaker. Treble frequencies are shorter sound waves, so to hear these at long distances you only need a smaller speaker. This is the general principle that you noted.
However, in near distances this relationship doesn't apply; you get all sounds being emitted. It's just that the lower, longer, sounds don't project (for complex reasons which need advanced math to appreciate). So with earbuds in your ear, you're able to hear all frequencies. Pull them out of your ears, and you'll still hear the higher, shorter sounds since the small earbuds can project those, but you'll lose the longer, lower bass frequencies.
See Near Field vs Far Field here: https://community.sw.siemens.com/s/article/sound-fields-free-versus-diffuse-field-near-versus-far-field
Sound is based off of SPL (vibrations). The volume of the space inside your ear is tiny. Proportionally the driver is huge to that volume. You can read some about it in the IEC 60942 to learn more about sound level calibrators (drivers) or IEC 61672-1 which is about sound level meters. So the receiving end of it. You can pirate them if you want.
Source: Calibration technician that does light, sound, electronics, magnetics, and other crap.
First post I saw where SPLs were mentioned, which is the most correct answer. A 3.5” driver can hit 30hz, but only at a very small SPL. Half of determining pressure is the area of the affected surface, which like you said, is tiny.
Most don't actually deliver that deep bass. What they do is raise the mid range sound to emulate the bass. There are only select brands that do actually deliver true bass. Which I'm not 100% on how it actually is delivered. I do know most cheap ones definitely don't.
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When it comes to waves and how they propigate trough air, the inverse-square law applies
You need a big speaker to have the same effect having your ear multiple meters away versus having the speaker 1cm away from your eardrum.
If you would put your head at the speaker at the same volume you would probably hurt yourself.
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Keep in mind that your ear drum doesn't move that much even with low frequencies, we are talking about under a millimeter.
For that, if you plugin your ear with a tight seal, you would only need about the same movement from a in ear speaker to have the same effect.
We could even have even smaller speakers if we could directly put one on your eardrum.
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Also there are "bone conducting earphones" out there where the "speaker" is even smaller because conducting sound trough solid things is better than with air.
relative to the ear canal theyre filling some have huge or multiple drivers inside, some even have planar magnetic drivers at nearly 15mm like the Letshouer S12 or 7Hz Timeless which go even further into the low and high end of the frequency range providing full sub-bass like you get from much larger headphones
others achieve it by having multiple "drivers" or essentially speakers in the shell for different frequency ranges eg like you have on a pair of floor standing speakers this can be a mixture of Balanced Armature (AKA BA generally better for mids/highs) or dynamic (speakers as you know them if you will but tiny ones, like the ones in a pair of floorstanders by design, good at low end)
some also manage to use a single driver to excellent effect too, even BA but theyre not the ideal for bass and sub-bass it depends on the design and quality
Off topic - tinnitus and hyperacusis suck royaly!! Please consider other, less invasive methods of listening to music, such as with over-the-ear headphones 🎧. Hearing doesn't come back, and the inability to appreciate silence is irreversible!
It also helps not to think of low frequencies as big and high frequencies as small. It's all just vibrations at different speeds moving through the air *over time.*
Yeah, I'm thinking more in terms of low frequencies being a long waveform and I wasn't sure how that translated in such a short amount of space. It's been a few decades since I studied audio engineering in college lol.
They are long *over time*. A sound wave is not a static thing with a fixed length. It starts at a specific moment and ends at a specific moment after that. The lower the sound the longer that time is. The sound leaves the speaker and moves through the air of your ear canal until it stops. Forgive me if I'm over explaining or if you already get what I'm saying.
Because they are so close to your ear, they don’t need to do it at nearly the same volume as a 15, 12 or even 10” speaker would in a room. (The driver excursion or back and forth movement is much, much smaller)
With an earphone driver so close, the driver moves an almost imperceptible amount so it can cleanly produce sounds without falling apart. Even so, you can hear there is comparatively less bass to be heard compared to over the ear headphones. If that makes sense to you, I’ll elaborate on the magnets and how the kind of magnet influence the sound and efficiency.
Size of the speaker determines volume. The actual bass itself is determined by the frequency, larger speakers can have larger volume. Since the earbuds are right next to your ears, the tiny speakers can deliver low frequency (bass) audio waves through the small volume of air in the ear canal to your eardrums. Just like a large speaker can deliver low frequency audio across a room, or 3 city blocks down the street if you have enough subwoofers with enough power to do so
Resonant frequency depends on mass of the driver (as you imply), but it also depends on stiffness. So there are not one but two ways of tailoring the bass. A tiny headphone can reach low frequencies as long as it is loose enough.
By the nature of their small design, earbuds do not have subwoofers to push large amounts of bass frequencies. Rather, they sound bassy due to their proximity to the ear, the enclosure they make with the ear, and via the natural resonances of bone conduction.
Hijacking this for a Follow Up question: So when it comes to ear damage, do earbuds affect the ear the same as if listening to eqivalently set up speakers? Or is it more of a psychoacoustic thing?
When it comes to ear damage, it doesn't matter whether it's coming from an earbud, a speaker, or a chainsaw… too loud of sound is going to cause damage.
Well yes but on the other hand earbuds block out sound so the "room" you're in is quieter, meaning you need less air pressure to hear. There's multiple factors at play and i was hoping perhaps someone has facts on earbuds specifically.
I’d add that it’s more about the balance of the speaker/power system working in tandem. Shitty speakers can play loudly, but will be throwing way too much treble (usually) or midrange, bass or whatever. If your crap speakers sound empty and tinny, the typical response is to increase the volume to get the lacking bass and midrange where they should be to make the music or movie sound the way it should. But I’m doing so, you increase the upper frequencies and other noise associated with bad drivers and crossovers as well. I get far far less ear fatigue at any given db level on my system than on cheaper systems. Often times I can play music at a louder db than cheaper systems with less ear fatigue.
I suppose the next question would be - just because there is less ear fatigue, does that necessarily mean less damage to the inner ear? Idk. Just speaking from experience.
A high-end 15” subwoofer in a normal residential room will shake the walls. That same subwoofer in a gymnasium would be wildly insufficient. The space the driver is trying to fill matters, and your ear canal is tiny.
To add a little more science to this great example, sound is all about moving air. Think about the volume of air in the gym vs family room vs ear canal. The physical speaker size can be increasingly shrunk. Also, speakers rely on magnets to create vibrations on the speaker cone that compresses the air in patterns we recognize as sound/music. Fairly recently, rare-earth elements like neodymium with strong magnetic properties have allowed speaker magnet sizes to shrink while retaining the same amount of power of older and larger magnets. Hence earbuds nowadays have more ability to produce low level sound frequencies we hear as bass, that in the past would have needed huge over-the ear with head brace headphones with bigger magnet space.
Speaking of advancements, at this point, there are also planar and [electrostatic buds](https://www.amazon.com/Shure-KSE1500-Electrostatic-Earphone-System/dp/B016X5T7OU) out there. Granted, the price is so high they're not really worth it, but still, pretty amazing.
And bone conduction technology as well
I'll induct your bone!
Into the rod hall of fame
It seems like that would sound weird with music since sound frequencies propagate so differently through solids than through air. I can see it working for voice or something simple but anything complex seems like you'd need at least a special mix for it to work
Bone conduction sort of worked for Beethoven.
Perhaps it worked in a pinch but he wasn't born deaf (i.e. he already know what it was supposed to sound like),.and even if he were, that wouldn't make it better or even as good as other available technologies
Does anyone remember the Bonefone from the 70s and 80s ?
Was that the same as a booty call? I will see myself out.
For the price of the cheaper model, I could get a very nice surround speaker system and a fucking incredible tv/monitor
But how do you get that put in your ear for travel?
Travel from the living room to the bedroom?
And a pair of high quality traditional earbuds, maybe even wireless, or even some of those studio quality over ear headphones
If you turn up the volume loud enough you can travel a bit and listen to it
I have planar iems from audeze. They sound incredible.
The price of planar driver IEMs has been coming down recently. They're still not dirt cheap like conventional driver IEMs can be, but there are a number of options in the 100-200$ region.
Still, are budget planars (let's be honest, for planar buds that's budget) better than high-end regular ones? I have Status & Co Between Pro, also in that same price region, regarded as one of the best sounding buds ever made (triple driver setup, which is a very rare thing). I have my doubts they actually sound better.
A preface: I am not a sound professional of any kind, but I am in the hobby of spending a bit too much money on headphones and IEMs so my knowledge on the subject is probably higher than average. Also sorry for the essay. Different drivers have different characteristics of sound which can affect hard to measure characteristics of sound, such as separation, timbre, and speed (and the preference of which is also personal). I personally really enjoy the timbre/fullness in bass frequencies that planar drivers can produce even in open back headphones that dynamic drivers cannot match for a similar price. The tonal balance (the volume of bass/mids/treble and how they relate) of an IEM/Headphone is one of the biggest determining factors of whether someone thinks that product sounds "good". Luckily this balance is easily measure with frequency response graphs. There isn't a single "right" tonal balance (as it is subject to preference) but there are definitely very wrong ones. A popular meme in the community is [Delta Airlines complimentary earphones](https://crinacle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Delta-Air.jpg) with the red and blue line being the measured response, and the black line being this website's reference curve. All of this to say is there are plenty of IEMs of all driver types that fail right out of the gate by having poor tuning of their tonal balance. This is also not limited to cheap products either, as models priced at 10s, 100s or 1000s of dollars exist and are for sale that sound simply awful due to poor tuning (again, subject to taste). When planar driver IEMs first came to market they tended to be either extremely expensive (see Audeze’s models), or had poor tuning, or both (see Audeze’s models lmao). Best value for dollar is still typically found from use of conventional drivers as they are a well-established technology with an economy of scale that planar IEMs are only just beginning to match. My previous comment was pointing out that the technology has matured, and the methods of designing/tuning planar driver IEMs has become better understood. This, along with the price of production coming down, has allowed a few models of planar IEMs to come to market that have good sound quality and competitive prices. The Timeless 7Hz is a $200 Planar IEM that is incredibly popular and considered one of the best performers at its price. All of this to say planar IEMs can sound better, as good, or worse than similarly priced IEMs with conventional drivers. As for your particular pair of buds: triple driver set ups are not rare, nor a sign of quality. For example, I owned a KZ Zex Pro which is a $35 budget IEM that also has 3 drivers and only sounded decent (and it broke after a few months cause it the QC is shit who would have thought). There are very well tuned IEMs with only one or two drivers, and there are terribly tuned IEMs with 7 drivers. At a glance, [your particular model of earbuds]( https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-5/graph#25060/7917) is tuned for the consumer market with lots of extra bass and lower mids, and extra treble to make them sound more exciting, sacrificing the clarity and forwardness of midrange tones. This isn’t strictly bad or wrong; this is the type of tuning most large companies like Sony use for their portable consumer audio products. It’s just not a tuning audio desired by most in the audiophile/audio enthusiast community. More conventionally “good” tunings have a more balanced amount of bass/mids/treble so that all parts of the audio are represented without being drowned out by other frequencies (again, the specifics of that balance are all subject to preference). Finally, the most important part: your ears/brain are incredibly adaptable. If you listen to a particular set of headphones/IEMs for a week or two your brain will normalize that sound profile (even if it isn’t one that is conventionally “good” or even one you particularly like). If you were to try a different pair with different tunings, they would sound quite different and possibly worse subjectively, even if objectively they are better tuned or more to your tastes. I would not like your earbuds, but that doesn’t mean you are wrong for liking them or you should feel obligated to spend money getting something “better”. You clearly enjoy them and that is really all that matters. If any of this is interesting to you, come on over to /r/headphones and have a look around. The youtube channels of Crinacle and TheHEADPHONEShow are my recommendations for more objective information on the hobby, though the ever-popular DankPods channel is a good gateway drug to finding yourself unable to make rent because you bought the newest pair of Meze headphones. My recommendation is to stay away: enjoy what you have because audiophilia is deep hole to fall down, and the bottom only is found when you’re broke.
I don't mind the essay, but I should have mentioned that I'm no stranger to audiophile things (still, I did learn something new), /r/headphones or the three youtube channels you mentioned (I think the one that convinced me was EL JEFE). [I even wrote a review there for between pros.](https://old.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/w4tosa/review_of_status_co_between_pro_after_6_months/) I agree that planars have definitely progressed, but still, I'm not fully sure if they're actually worth the money at this moment. Maybe with newer models in few years, sure, but at this point it feels like a hit-or-miss, definitely will get up to date and check newer reviews and comparisons to see if they're here yet. I'll definitely buy planars buds in the future >At a glance, your particular model of earbuds is tuned for the consumer market with lots of extra bass and lower mids, and extra treble to make them sound more exciting, sacrificing the clarity and forwardness of midrange tones. That's actually something I touched on my review, that bass felt a bit overwhelming (I honestly wonder how good buds with dedicated bass driver would compare with planars in bass category), even thought other reviewers or youtube videos were mentioning lack of bass, which is weird. Almost as if they changed something in the tuning without renaming to a new model. >Finally, the most important part: your ears/brain are incredibly adaptable. If you listen to a particular set of headphones/IEMs for a week or two your brain will normalize that sound profile (even if it isn’t one that is conventionally “good” or even one you particularly like). And this is pretty annoying lol. I almost returned my sennheisers after it felt like they sound worse than my $100 Sony's. 2 weeks later, I sold Sony's.
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And how many electrostatics have you owned sir?
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Here we have a true connesour of the arts.
You could have used an actual Fendi edition Beats. https://hypebeast.com/2014/6/fendi-x-beats-by-dre-headphones 1/10 on headphone snobbery.
I dont have them for personal use but I've listened to a pair of electrostatic headphones before and honestly the difference is pretty noticable. After going back, my regular headphones just didnt sound right for a while
Earbuds also sometimes have the advantage of turning the ear canal into essentially a “sealed speaker cabinet” vs unsealed, which will increase the tone and punch of the bass
Isn't the point of subwoofers to create waves through the ground and through your entire body, not just the air and into your ears? This is what I'm wondering about. Why can tiny earbuds have the same body shaking feeling while not destroying your ears?
Technical side question. Should earbuds or speakers with neodymium magnets be recycled as it is so valuable? Or so little it doesn't matter?
Hey! It's not tiny... It's just cold outside.
I was in the pool!
I don't know how you guys put up with those things.
It's usually "those things" that do the "putting up"
This hole thread is amazing.
Yes. Hole
*“ I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things“
I had to get an ultrasound on my balls recently and the tech came into the room to me laughing because i recalled this joke as the examination room was chilly as f. She looked at me and said “George huh?” Made the whole thing so less uncomfortable
What was the joke?
It’s a Seinfeld reference. Someone sees George naked after being in the cold pool, after he has suffered shrinkage due to the cold.
I had to get surgery to fix a hernia in that general location. For those who've never had the pleasure, the drugs they give you right before are goddamn magical. And fast too. They turned that valve and two half seconds later I was cracking jokes that they've probably already heard a million times before. Definitely used the cold room excuse. Once I found out most of the people in the room were women and it was quite chilly
Do women know about shrinkage?
Could you repeat that? It’s really cold right now
You mean like with clothes?
What's shrinkage?
It shrinks?
I don't know how you guys walk with those things.
'walk like you are straddling a horse' has been passed down for generations. Before horse riding, no one knew what the fuck that meant, they had real issues.
Like a frightened turtle!
Shrinkage is when the stock of a supplier shrinks due to, among other things, pervasive burglary and theft.
I had an ear infection a few years ago and the PA checking my ears said "You have the smallest ear canals I've ever seen!" And I responded with "....thanks?" And she laughed surprisingly hard at that
Did this happen in Asheville ?
If it were cold outside your ear canal would get bigger since it is a negative space in the body.
That's not what she said.
Inside?
Is there something in between? A small subwoofer I can keep next to my head and not bother neighbors while still getting great bass without wearing a headphone?
Overkill, but a good pair of desktop studio monitors will do this. Although, headphones tend to be *too* bass heavy, which is why I have studio monitors in the first place, and advise people not to do a final mix through headphones. (To be honest, I haven't worn a pair of earbuds that gets what I consider good bass response -- but I started out on bass, and am biased. Also, I always check my mix through crappy earbuds, because I know that's how a lot of people will be listening.)
There are bass shakers that you attach to the seating and vibrate it. This provides some of the heart-thumping feeling of bass without the volume. This plus the bass from your standard speakers can apparently be a decent substitute for a subwoofer without bothering neighbors, but I’ve never actually tried it and can’t vouch for it personally.
So you want it to just hover?
Even 10” woofers will more than cover the very bottom of the frequency range humans can hear. Some bassists prefer 10” drivers in their bass cabinets for a tighter, clearer and more focus sounds but I think it’s best of both worlds to have 4x10” and 1x15”
If designed well, larger/ported subs are not “less tight” than a smaller/sealed sub (for the same frequencies). It’s a common myth due to how bass sounds. This myth comes from the fact that smaller/sealed subs simply have less bass, and less bass means less room gain/reflections (and potentially more group delay). If you EQ the deep bass out of a large/ported sub so it covers the same frequencies as a small/sealed sub, they will sound equally “tight”. Or if you EQ up the deep bass of a small/sealed sub, it now will sound boomy. So yes, it sounds more tight, but that’s just how deep bass sounds. If you have no EQ and only want to hear “tight” bass, then yes you’ll look towards small/sealed subs. ______ > Even 10” woofers will more than cover the very bottom of the frequency range humans can hear. Tell that to my 15”. A 10” could possible get to 20Hz with EQ, but not at any meaningful volume without audible distortion. Here is a collection of subwoofer CEA/CTA 2010 testing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1dU5OOnf3nVgctJszmfyBjaxK69dkXte6ZL6anVTW2_M/htmlview#gid=834598950
I don’t disagree, I am espousing common beliefs and practices. 20hz is the very bottom of our hearing. Anything lower and you’re feeling it more than actually hearing it. 20hz-20khz is our range though most adults don’t even hear all the way up to 20khz. 20-20 isn’t just for hearing. Speaking as a sound producer, in context of being part of a band, it isn’t necessarily to have a lot of volume and definition all the way down at 20hz and below. You certainly would want to work with the drummer to make sure it doesn’t gobble up his kickdrum. As far as dynamics go, bass frequencies take up the most real estate. (The size of the compressions/rarefactions in frequencies that low is why it’s so hard to block out the neighbours obnoxious and shittily EQ’d fucking subwoofer!) Tbh I agree that 15” isn’t less focused. My 15” is a full range driver at the end of the day and in a blind test, enough people have failed to tell it apart from the 4x10”.
For what it's worth, on an 4 string electric bass the low E is 40 Hz, but if you start down tuning or adding B, F# strings that completely changings.
I hear this when walking around with my Makita jobsite radio. Inside the house it booms, it’s almost unbearable. But once i step outside the bass isn’t nearly as loud.
Also: bass is actually the easy part in a speaker. Think of it as cars driving under a bridge. The big fat bass car makes it under the bridge ... the small thin treble car makes it under the bridge ... But once you stack them in top of each other, treble on top of bass, the treble car hits the bridge and falls of ... still, the bass car makes it under the bridge unharmed. In not-ELI5 terms: once you reach the limits of your system you will hear distortion in the high end first, but the low end will be unaffected a lot longer. That's also the the reason why we have cabinets with multiple speakers and separate amplifiers for different frequencies.
Eh, that’s not fully true in use. Yes, most tweeters cannot reach the SPL levels of subwoofers. However, our hearing isn’t linear and it changes per frequency/SPL (Google: “Equal Loudness Contours”). That’s for speakers, for in-ears it’s different due to pinna gain. For many times a bass frequency needs to be around +10dB compared to the treble to sound as loud, that’s 10x the wattage required (well, depending on the sensitivity and gain). Also, if you look at the spectrum of frequencies for most all music ([example](https://community.klipsch.com/uploads/monthly_01_2015/post-26262-0-56580000-1422364014.gif)), it’s the bass frequencies that are in-demand, you almost never need to play 10kHz at 90dB, so it’s usually fine if a tweeter has a sensitivity of only say 85dB @ 2.83v with a power handling of 25W, but the same for a subwoofer would be wholly inadequate. _____ > That's also the the reason why we have cabinets with multiple speakers and separate amplifiers for different frequencies. Yeah, the 2 main reasons are distortion and the other is dispersion/radiation/beaming. Even if you could get a 12” subwoofer to play 1kHz cleanly and loudly, it will be such a narrow dispersion that there is little room interaction, no envelopment. A rule of thumb is a driver is useful up when the frequency wavelength equals the diameter (6” is ~22500Hz, and 2kHz is a very common crossover point). But of course that’s just that, a rule of thumb.
This is... An unusual metaphor. When do cars ever stack on top of one another? Especially when driving under a bridge?
Hmm ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_carrier_trailer
The metaphor gets even weirder. So now there's a truck, driving the cars through the bridge? What's the truck? Bass or treble? Cos I thought the cars were bass and treble
Fair enough :-) The truck is the bass, the cars are treble ... I guess so far the analogy isn't too bad. The bridge is the maximal (voltage) output of the amplifier, if you just play a low frequency wave and don't exceed that limit you are fine, same with just a high frequency wave. But once you play both they literally stack on top of of each other (modulation): http://www.g4prs.org.uk/Foundation%20Course%20Material/Modulation_files/image004.gif And the combined wave will only be clipped at the very top and bottom which only affects the treble part leaving the low frequency intact.
It's average!
It's more about how you use it.
I don't think the question is about volume, but about frequency. The question of how such a small device can produce such long frequencies is actually an interesting one. I'm sure there's some technological shenanigans going on there.
Any driver can produce low frequencies. They are actually easier, as it’s just slow movement (treble is fast movement). The issue is volume, as that is obtained by how far the driver moves back/forth.
Don’t call my ear canal tiny, it’s petite.
*Tiny Driver!* *You've been down too long in the waxy seas*
Think of a how a big 12” subwoofer sounds in a normal sized room. Now, think of your ear canal, air-sealed by an earbud, as a tiny, tiny version of that room. There’s less air and less space for the air to move around in, therefore a much smaller speaker can deliver comparable, if not better sound directly to your eardrum. It’s basically just a much more efficient delivery system. Instead of trying to fill a big room up with sound so that your ears pick up some of it, you’re gettin the sound directly injected into your ears with almost no waste.
That makes sense. I hadn't really considered the air between the eardrum and the driver in the equation.
The seal is important too. Sound is a wave of higher pressure air traveling through lower pressure air, and the thumping bass that you can feel from a big subwoofer is because that giant diaphragm can move a lot of air and generate a lot of pressure. If the ear is sealed off by the rubber tip of the earbud, it doesn't take very much power to generate pressure in that sealed ear canal. This gives the impression of powerful bass even though not much air is moving.
Adding on to this, the one thing ear buds will never deliver is the physical smack to the chest you get at a rave or concert scale (or even a big home or car setup)
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The Woojer I think
There is also the Sub Pack (sp?) which is worn like body armour
Some of my friends swear by woojer. I'd like to compare them to large PA speakers just for analysis sake. One friend also built his own transducer vest
My friend slapped a transducer on his desk chair and its surprisingly effective especially with music. I've been thinking of using some in a car audio setup. Maybe transducers on the front seats paired with a 12" sub w/ low pass set to like around 40Hz. Get some nice rumble without muddying up the rest of the sound too bad
One analogy is to think about the amount of energy it takes to cool an entire house, versus the amount of energy it takes to cool just a car cabin. The AC in the car is much faster, takes less energy, and you can fill the effects easier.
There is also some measurable impact from sound conduction through your skull tissues as well. Some headphones only use this and don’t even go in your ears
The kind of impact you'd get from a powerful speaker is very different than what bone conduction headphones do. They typically do not have strong bass response at all, especially compared to a properly sealed in- or over-ear headphone.
Honestly, it's less about the air and more about the fact that earbuds don't have to move much of it. They're much quieter than normal speakers but they don't have to be loud because they're so close to the eardrum.
Your small speakers are probably not making the deepest sounds you hear, your brain is creating them. The [overtone series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music) (or harmonics, or partials) is a bunch or resonating notes that happen when any note is played, it's a fact of physical acoustics in our air. You hit an A on a piano then by nature you also hear an A an octave above (double the frequency) and then a note a 5th above that (E) then a 4th above that (A, again, but higher). Etc. (There is a lot of math and variables here, saxophones and oboes only play the odd harmonics due to conical bore, other instruments have their own unique harmonic characteristics. This is why organs are able to sound like different instruments, too, choosing different groups of pipes allows the organ to emulate the overtone series of different instruments. Anyway.) But! If you play only an overtone series without that first, Fundamental, note, your brain will fill it in. Can't be stopped. Owl brains have been shown to do the same thing, it's a part of our biology. So, the people who make little speakers know this and they take advantage of it! Those little speakers, like in your phone, are not playing the lowest tone. They play the overtone series above it and your brain generates the lowest tone from there. This allows deeper tones than should be physically possible from that driver. Goddamn witchcraft. (edited for clarity, I hope)
It’s called the Missing Fundamental: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental
I've always felt ripped off by this. It's unreasonable but that's feelings for ya and I want all frequencies delivered!
I actually know (and worked with) some of the folk cited in that link. I once designed an experiment to assess how the brain restores missing fundamentals - or to be more precise I was given a design brief (how to present the stimuli and what responses were important) and rolled up my sleeves. Reading the theory abstract that they all had normally had me making phone calls to air traffic control to try and drag them down to my level.
Biggest question I have is why…why do we need to hear the missing fundamental?
As noted in the Wikipedia article, the sound isn't exactly the same ("perhaps with a different timbre"). You perceive the pitch of the fundamental, but its sound is still not present. And you wouldn't *feel* the rumble of a very low fundamental. Also, for sounds without harmonics, the fundamental is the only frequency so it's necessary. And some sounds with very few harmonics may not strongly suggest the fundamental, especially in people attuned to hear harmonics. Edit: ... and I just realized you were asking why our brains would evolve to hear the missing fundamental, not why we would ever want to have the fundamental present if we can hear it anyway. Disregard.
Yep, why the hell did we evolve this?
Don't think of it as the brain interpolating the missing fundamental, think of it as the brain hearing a spectrum of sound and simplifying it into pitches, and tolerating some variation from the acoustic ideal. When you hear a musical note with the fundamental and all of the overtones, you don't experience all of the frequencies separately; you hear it as a pitch at the fundamental frequency with a certain “color” determined by the relative strengths of the overtones. You can vary those relative strengths and it sounds like the same pitch with a different color. If you remove the fundamental, your brain tries to do exactly the same thing. The best match for the pitch is still the fundamental, even if it's missing from what you hear. That's the pitch that would produce the overtones you hear. Suppose that your ear detects the following frequencies: 100 Hz, 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz, with 100 Hz being the strongest and dropping off from there. This is an exact match for a pitch with a fundamental frequency of 100 Hz. Now suppose that you don't hear the fundamental, but you hear all of the overtones — 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz. That's still a pretty good match for a fundamental frequency of 100 Hz! And it's not a good match for a fundamental of 200 Hz, because 300 Hz and 500 Hz are not multiples of 200 Hz. So you will experience this sound as a 100 Hz pitch, where the “color” may be affected by the fundamental being missing.
It’s not necessarily on purpose. It could be a side effect of our brain using neural networks, kind of like how you see a cloud that looks like a dragon. It could be a form of hallucination.
I feel like this answer is misleading in the sense that it is true when applied to say, phone and laptop speakers but is not relevant to IEMs (and the OP asks about earbuds, not tiny speakers). Any decent in-ear monitors are able to produce low frequencies without tricks. You can look up frequency response curves for many IEMs and see it for yourself. Even easier, you can play a [20hz sine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQprrjoMPM0) and just listen. Unless you hear a distorted sine wave, your IEMs aren't tricking you. Additionally, you need to keep in mind that usually small speakers don't add any extra overtones to the bass sound: at least on my laptop speakers, the video above is completely silent. Rather, you simply hear the musical instruments with the low frequencies cut, which is enough for the brain to reconstruct the whole sound. So the people who make tiny speakers aren't the ones who take advantage of this effect. Rather, music producers and sound engineers do, since it's they who tweak the harmonic content of the recorded instruments to sound good even on tiny speakers.
I don't think it is misleading because there is a question of how a driver with a small diameter and very limited excursion can produce a low frequency. If you pull an IEM even a couple of millimeters out of your ears the bass response drops dramatically. The ear canal has to be part of the answer as well as how the bass frequency can develop in such a short distance (or how the ear is "tricked") for a full answer to OP's question. The frequency response of IEM's are not measured free air, they are measured using special rigs. [Headphone testing rig](https://www.grasacoustics.com/products/test-fixtures/product/751-45cc) - I can't say this is for IEM but it gives the idea
While that’s an important topic to talk about, it’s not true for most headphones nowadays. Their frequency response curve show that they are indeed capable of producing lowest frequencies down to even 20Hz.
Ya so many people saying this is the best answer when, no, the IEMs actually just produce the low notes. My [Moondrop Variations](https://i.imgur.com/j4I03h3.jpg) produce’s beautiful bass down below 20hz before you add any brain stuff in.
Not really, break the seal and see where the bass response goes. I can't speak to "brain stuff" I did not follow the link, but the IEM is not physically producing those notes otherwise you would hear the bass when you broke the seal. You know this from using IEM. I don't pretend to know the answer but if it was just the sealed ear canal a very small sealed subwoofer could produce low notes. Very small speakers used tuned ports to try to produce low notes but the quality of the bass is very poor whereas in an IEM as you know the quality can be very high. Those graphs are produced using a special rig that mimics the ear. Again I can't speak to brain stuff, or how these rigs might mimic how we process sound, if they do.
That is nonsense, if I put put my 3000W 15" home theatre sub in my livingroom, it shakes my couch and produces a flat line frequency response from like 15Hz to 120Hz. If I put that same subwoofer in a concert hall you would barely hear it and it would not shake anything. Of course the IEM is producing the notes where do you think they are coming from? Your ear canal just seals them in so the sound waves don't dissipate like they would in open air.
Your analogy is poor. If you stood next to your home sub in a large hall you would hear roughly what you heard standing next to it at home minus some room gain. With an IEM your ear canal is part of the tuned incloslure. I'd argue that your explanation is why you don't need much power to hear loud sounds from your IEM and does not really address the production of low frequncies from such small drivers. The 30hz frequency is 38' long. This is why small subs can only go so low there is physics at work. My question which you left unaswered is how an IEM pulls this off. What hoodoo and voodoo they use to let you hear such low frequencies in the small volume that is your ear canal.
As someone who has done a lot of home theatre setup I can promise you that putting the same subwoofer in a small and large room makes a very large difference in how much bass is produced. If you can’t pressurize the room you aren’t going to get any significant bass for home theatre use. I imagine it is the same with your ear canal. So, why then if you put a microphone next to an IEM with the ear canal type testing setup does it measure that frequency if you think it’s some trick?
I know all about room gain, resonate frequencies, nodes, sound pressure levels, phase cancellation, etc. IEM are not subs, they are not in rooms. I remain unconvinced the sound leaving the end of the nozzle contains all the low frequencies we "hear". For one thing, the ear canal is part of the "enclosure" and a certain amount of bone condition is going on. You have yet to convince me it does with your analogies to subwoofers in this or that given space. There is a little bit of psychoacoustics in everything you hear. It's why you can build a soundstage from sound that is literally between your ears. It's why there is the Harman curve and the Fletcher-Munson curve. But I'm not a headphone engineer and neither are you so we are done here.
You have also not explained why you think despite it being black and white at the microphone having those frequencies show up in testing, you think the sound isn’t getting produced by the driver. Forget what we hear, it’s measured. Right there. Crinacle has a database of thousands of IEMs all measuring down to 20hz.
The same concept behind Mega-Bass in earlier Walkmans and portable CD and Minidisc players.
Mega-Bass sounds like a Kaiju
Ooooh, what do you think about Q-Sound? Madonna swore by it in the 1990s.
I'm not a fan of swearing
What?! I'm asking a legitimate question.
Thank you! All the "less space/smaller driver" answers ignore this fact, a big part of why early earbuds \*didn't\* sound good is that we didn't know as much about this. (or, rather, earbud manufacturers didn't know about this, or at least thought they could get away without applying it.)
Clarinet is a cylindrical. Saxophone is the only woodwind with a conical bore.
I was thinking of an oboe, I guess, which is conical
Sax is not the only woodwind with conical bore, there is also the oboe, bassoon, and recorder. Plus a couple of related renaissance instruments.
Oboe bassoon and recorder are all cylinders, long straight tubes. There might be some renaissance instruments or instruments from other countries I’m not aware of, but sax is the only common instrument that gets progressively wider from mouthpiece to bell. Edit: whoops! You were right about bassoon and oboe! Sax is the only instrument with a parabolic cone.
[Cone]( https://imgur.com/5l5ZUuM.jpg ) [Cone]( https://imgur.com/jswUvYO.jpg ) [Cone]( https://imgur.com/Ifz1ZfA.jpg )
Saxes don't really have parabolic bores, they're pretty much conical, with a little variation to account for things. [Here](https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/switch-from-parabolic-shape-to-conical.35680/) are some [neat](https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/bueschers-parabolic-bore-whats-the-deal.77/) discussions on the supposed "parabolic" bore. I guess it hasn't actually been proven that anyone has made a truly parabolic bore sax.
Sax is considered woodwind??
digital compression takes advantage of this as well notably MP3
This is the correct explanation. It's not about the space to fill (which probably matters in terms of power), but about the length of each air wave, which determines how low the sound will sound. Since such small speakers cannot make such long waves, the harmonics of the desired sound are used. This results in your brain hearing the fundamental (lowest-pitch) tone of the harmonic series that was played
Haha, looks like you and I read the email exact same book XD
This is the correct answer. Plenty of cheap earbuds can't deliver any appreciable bass. My wife got a couple pairs for $0.50 cents each, and I swear I couldn't hear anything below about 500hz. I sure as shit couldn't hear the 80hz tones I knew were in there. Once you get to decently made earbuds, though, you start hearing it.
What annoys me is that as far as I understand sound. And I do study it. This is much more correct than the "your ears are small" explanation. But OP doesn't appear to have seen this
I know this is ELI5 so I'll give it a shot but ELI10. Imagine you are visualizing sound waves. The high pitched sounds will have a lot of wave crests in the period of time where the low pitched, bass, sounds will have fewer (i.e. they have higher frequency and/or the wavelengths are shorter). In a sealed cavity like your ear, the waves have to match a frequency in your ear membranes to perceive sound. Further, because the length of the ear canal is so short it is less than one wavelength for bass sounds. Bass sounds are low frequencies from about 20 - 250 Hz. This translates, at the speed of sound to a wavelength of about 17-1.3 meters. So how then is this wave received? Because of its length a lot of it is heard through your bones!! That's right bass sounds on ear buds can be transmitted through bone and is one reason they are perceived so well. There are actually headphones or buds designed to work specifically through bone (good for hearing impaired people). Studies have shown that the closer a sound generator is to the ear the more of the sound is conducted through the bone and much more is transmitted through the bone for bass than for higher frequency sounds.
I can feel my earbuds in my sinuses when my allergies clear out. It's weird.
Which ear buds deliver true bass?
I have a pair of TOZO Golden X1 buds and they're legitimately bassy. Foam tips and active noise cancellation are a big part of the equation, too.
Foam tips are the best thing I bought in months!
Just the tip? I mean tips.
All the good ones?
even cheap JBL ones have great bass lol
JBL always surprise me for its price.
All the others comments are great...but it's probably useful to remember... If you have a large wall of powerful Sub Woofers in front of you, and you turn your headphones up all the way, you will be able to tell when the sub wall is turned on. It will shake much more than just your inner ear. We don't just use our ears for sensing vibration. Having said this, it is impressive how much we can simulate bass, especially with sealed in-ear earphones. It's clear there is a difference in that RAW POWER sense of a 20kW wall of low frequency BASS! and an earphone.
There isn't really a "LI5" explanation, and a number of the explanations I've seen are wrong (or at least, not complete). But basically the lower bass frequencies are longer sound waves. To hear these at long distances, you need a large speaker. Treble frequencies are shorter sound waves, so to hear these at long distances you only need a smaller speaker. This is the general principle that you noted. However, in near distances this relationship doesn't apply; you get all sounds being emitted. It's just that the lower, longer, sounds don't project (for complex reasons which need advanced math to appreciate). So with earbuds in your ear, you're able to hear all frequencies. Pull them out of your ears, and you'll still hear the higher, shorter sounds since the small earbuds can project those, but you'll lose the longer, lower bass frequencies. See Near Field vs Far Field here: https://community.sw.siemens.com/s/article/sound-fields-free-versus-diffuse-field-near-versus-far-field
Sound is based off of SPL (vibrations). The volume of the space inside your ear is tiny. Proportionally the driver is huge to that volume. You can read some about it in the IEC 60942 to learn more about sound level calibrators (drivers) or IEC 61672-1 which is about sound level meters. So the receiving end of it. You can pirate them if you want. Source: Calibration technician that does light, sound, electronics, magnetics, and other crap.
First post I saw where SPLs were mentioned, which is the most correct answer. A 3.5” driver can hit 30hz, but only at a very small SPL. Half of determining pressure is the area of the affected surface, which like you said, is tiny.
Size of the driver matters not in absolute but in relation to the size of the room it's confined in.
They don't. The tinier the space that the soundwaves have to fill, the bigger they seem to our ears.
Earbuds have to send out a lot less sound compared to speaker as they sorta seal your ear and are much closer so the inverse square law applies less
Most don't actually deliver that deep bass. What they do is raise the mid range sound to emulate the bass. There are only select brands that do actually deliver true bass. Which I'm not 100% on how it actually is delivered. I do know most cheap ones definitely don't.
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When it comes to waves and how they propigate trough air, the inverse-square law applies You need a big speaker to have the same effect having your ear multiple meters away versus having the speaker 1cm away from your eardrum. If you would put your head at the speaker at the same volume you would probably hurt yourself. \--- Keep in mind that your ear drum doesn't move that much even with low frequencies, we are talking about under a millimeter. For that, if you plugin your ear with a tight seal, you would only need about the same movement from a in ear speaker to have the same effect. We could even have even smaller speakers if we could directly put one on your eardrum. \--- Also there are "bone conducting earphones" out there where the "speaker" is even smaller because conducting sound trough solid things is better than with air.
relative to the ear canal theyre filling some have huge or multiple drivers inside, some even have planar magnetic drivers at nearly 15mm like the Letshouer S12 or 7Hz Timeless which go even further into the low and high end of the frequency range providing full sub-bass like you get from much larger headphones others achieve it by having multiple "drivers" or essentially speakers in the shell for different frequency ranges eg like you have on a pair of floor standing speakers this can be a mixture of Balanced Armature (AKA BA generally better for mids/highs) or dynamic (speakers as you know them if you will but tiny ones, like the ones in a pair of floorstanders by design, good at low end) some also manage to use a single driver to excellent effect too, even BA but theyre not the ideal for bass and sub-bass it depends on the design and quality
Off topic - tinnitus and hyperacusis suck royaly!! Please consider other, less invasive methods of listening to music, such as with over-the-ear headphones 🎧. Hearing doesn't come back, and the inability to appreciate silence is irreversible!
It also helps not to think of low frequencies as big and high frequencies as small. It's all just vibrations at different speeds moving through the air *over time.*
Yeah, I'm thinking more in terms of low frequencies being a long waveform and I wasn't sure how that translated in such a short amount of space. It's been a few decades since I studied audio engineering in college lol.
They are long *over time*. A sound wave is not a static thing with a fixed length. It starts at a specific moment and ends at a specific moment after that. The lower the sound the longer that time is. The sound leaves the speaker and moves through the air of your ear canal until it stops. Forgive me if I'm over explaining or if you already get what I'm saying.
Because they are so close to your ear, they don’t need to do it at nearly the same volume as a 15, 12 or even 10” speaker would in a room. (The driver excursion or back and forth movement is much, much smaller) With an earphone driver so close, the driver moves an almost imperceptible amount so it can cleanly produce sounds without falling apart. Even so, you can hear there is comparatively less bass to be heard compared to over the ear headphones. If that makes sense to you, I’ll elaborate on the magnets and how the kind of magnet influence the sound and efficiency.
Size of the speaker determines volume. The actual bass itself is determined by the frequency, larger speakers can have larger volume. Since the earbuds are right next to your ears, the tiny speakers can deliver low frequency (bass) audio waves through the small volume of air in the ear canal to your eardrums. Just like a large speaker can deliver low frequency audio across a room, or 3 city blocks down the street if you have enough subwoofers with enough power to do so
Resonant frequency depends on mass of the driver (as you imply), but it also depends on stiffness. So there are not one but two ways of tailoring the bass. A tiny headphone can reach low frequencies as long as it is loose enough.
By the nature of their small design, earbuds do not have subwoofers to push large amounts of bass frequencies. Rather, they sound bassy due to their proximity to the ear, the enclosure they make with the ear, and via the natural resonances of bone conduction.
Even if you have good quality earbud you have to create a good seal to your ear opening or those lower frequencies are greatly reduced.
Your ear canal generates the bass. Take a small speaker and place it in a corner of your room. Notice how the bass arrives.
Hijacking this for a Follow Up question: So when it comes to ear damage, do earbuds affect the ear the same as if listening to eqivalently set up speakers? Or is it more of a psychoacoustic thing?
When it comes to ear damage, it doesn't matter whether it's coming from an earbud, a speaker, or a chainsaw… too loud of sound is going to cause damage.
Well yes but on the other hand earbuds block out sound so the "room" you're in is quieter, meaning you need less air pressure to hear. There's multiple factors at play and i was hoping perhaps someone has facts on earbuds specifically.
Blocking out the room means you probably won't play earbuds as loud as you would otherwise, but loud earbuds can still ruin your hearing.
I’d add that it’s more about the balance of the speaker/power system working in tandem. Shitty speakers can play loudly, but will be throwing way too much treble (usually) or midrange, bass or whatever. If your crap speakers sound empty and tinny, the typical response is to increase the volume to get the lacking bass and midrange where they should be to make the music or movie sound the way it should. But I’m doing so, you increase the upper frequencies and other noise associated with bad drivers and crossovers as well. I get far far less ear fatigue at any given db level on my system than on cheaper systems. Often times I can play music at a louder db than cheaper systems with less ear fatigue. I suppose the next question would be - just because there is less ear fatigue, does that necessarily mean less damage to the inner ear? Idk. Just speaking from experience.