Page 2: Phones & Ohms

Range On The Ohms

If IEC 61938 had been universally adopted, then designers could engineer their headphones to be driven by a standardised 120Ω output, taking into account the coloration born out of interaction between the amplifier output and the headphone's impedance. However, the standard was never taken up by amplifier designers in this way, and I can find no evidence that headphones were ever designed specifically for use with 120Ω outputs — only that studio and hi-fi headphones used to favour high voice-coil impedances, and thus were less impacted by the relatively high output impedance of the amplifier's driving circuit.

Most portable devices achieve an output impedance below 10Ω — but there are many that don't, and this can affect the frequency response of connected headphones.

At Sonarworks we've carried out output-impedance measurements on most of the smartphones currently available. This was done to prepare for implementing our DSP calibration solution on smart devices, so that frequency-response deviations can be accounted for. Measurements were obtained from 170 devices, and most fall in the 1 to 10 Ω range. Notably Apple and Samsung smart devices had very little trouble providing low output impedance. Sony smartphones didn't fare too well, though, with output impedances in the teens, while the worst results were mostly from more obscure phones made by Gigabyte, Alcatel and OnePlus.

So what about pro gear? Sadly, we weren't able to test many audio interfaces, and although some manufacturers state the output impedance for their headphone outputs, most shy away from doing so. RME's Fireface UCX had a 30Ω output impedance, but their newer Fireface UFX II has a much lower output impedance of 2Ω, which is better. Antelope Audio seem to stick to the old 120Ω standard, although they have implemented an almost zero-Ohm output-impedance amp on their new AM RI converter. Interestingly, this device is also able to switch to a negative output impedance! Generally, it seems as though manufacturers are taking notice and are trying to design their headphone outputs with very low output impedances. I'd urge them to more clearly state the specs of their headphone outputs, as more and more audio creatives are using headphones as their primary monitoring device.

Many integrated amplifiers in hi-fi systems, meanwhile, have headphone outputs taken right from the power amp's output stage, with some resistors tacked on. It's a cheap way to do it, but one shouldn't expect wonders from budget-class equipment. The proper way to do it would be to add a dedicated headphone stage with a simple op-amp circuit, which costs very little.

RME's ADI‑2 DAC is one of very few devices on the market that offers variable-gain headphone outputs to cater for the full range of impedances and efficiencies out there.The challenge of limiting power into low-impedance loads can be met in other ways with smart design. An obvious solution would be to implement a gain switch, providing a low-gain mode for low-impedance cans, and a high-gain mode for voltage-hungry high-impedance loads. Keeping an amp at low gain comes with numerous performance advantages: a stronger negative-feedback loop controls the amp more precisely, for lower noise and lower distortion. Dedicated headphone amps sometimes have this feature, but audio interfaces seem to omit it. The RME ADI‑2 DAC and ADI‑2 Pro are welcome exceptions, as they can be set to automatically increase the gain when volume is turned up. The ADI‑2 DAC even has a separate low-power output stage just for IEMs, implemented with lower gain and thus lower noise — which is especially important for super-sensitive models.

Analogue Problems: Digital Solutions?

It might seem as though it's a jungle out there, with extreme variations in headphone sensitivity and load impedance, and audio interfaces with mystery specs, some of which outright ignore the requirement to keep the output impedance low. However, mostly out of necessity, there is some convergence going on. For one, it's extremely rare to see headphone manufacturers come out with truly inefficient designs. Headphone impedance is also generally going down, with the recently released 150Ω Neumann NDH20 being a notable exception. That particular model is reasonably efficient, though, and can be driven from most laptop outputs. Most other recent releases in the studio headphone world have tended to present about an 80Ω impedance, and only established models like the Sennheiser HD650 and HD600 or Beyerdynamic DT770 and DT990 stick to higher impedances that require an audio interface with a decent headphone driver to achieve a good volume headroom.

As mentioned previously, multi-driver IEMs have especially wild impedance swings due to their passive crossovers. Generally, our engineers have found the performance of IEMs too inconsistent to recommend them for critical applications, mainly due to their variable fit in the user's ears. They are, however, irreplaceable as stage monitors for performing musicians. Custom-moulded IEMs should at least mitigate the fit issue, but the problem of interaction between the output impedance of a wireless receiver's headphone amp and the tricky load presented by the IEM still looms. Specifications for the analogue outputs in popular wireless IEM receivers rarely list any measurements beyond frequency response, power delivery and noise level. Hopefully, their designers have taken into account that almost any output impedance will make delivering the promised tonal response impossible. On top of that, an output feed resistor will turn precious amplifier power into heat, thus shortening battery life.

Headphone calibration products such as Sonarworks' Reference 4 can compensate for impedance-based frequency anomalies, in theory, but only if the impedances of the source and the headphones are known.

It's unlikely that we'll ever end up in a situation where all headphone amps have near-zero output impedance. This being the case, there's another option: the tonal shifts resulting from output and load-impedance interaction can also be fixed digitally. Our lab uses Schiit Magni 3 amps, which all have less than 0.3Ω output impedance, and we've always stated that our calibration products are meant for headphone drivers with zero or near-zero output impedance. Potentially, someone using our product with a headphone output that has higher impedance would not be able to get the promised flat frequency response. To counter this real-world problem, we have thought about implementing an algorithm to account for the resulting tonal shift. The maths behind it is rather simple: all that would be needed is load impedance measurements for all 310 IEM model profiles and a way for the listener to find out the exact output impedance of their headphone amplifier. As seen in the tonal shift graph for the Shure SE535 above, the frequency response deviation follows the electrical impedance curve, with the magnitude changes depending only on the output impedance figure, so a correction curve can be easily calculated. The hard part will be getting hold of all the headphones to measure them again...

Rūdolfs Putniņš is Marketing Project Manager at Sonarworks.