When choosing headphones, it’s important not only to look at the brand, price, speaker size and design. You should carefully read their technical characteristics, study the indicators of sensitivity and impedance. What is it and how to choose the right devices will be described later.
What is headphone sensitivity
Headphone sensitivity - the efficiency of the devices, their effective power consumption, measured in decibels and megawatts or in watts. That is, in simple words, this is the ratio of volume to the power of the input signal. This value indicates the energy efficiency of musical instruments. However, it is impossible to provide an accurate indicator for all types of devices. For each, the sensitivity is different and depends on the impedance (resistance). Therefore, often, picking up a device, they look at it and resistance.
What is affected by the indicator
He is responsible for the sound volume. Due to the low rate, it is impossible to fully perceive the entire frequency range and hear a sound signal in places where it is very noisy. For example, it is difficult to do this in a train car, tram, car, etc. If we consider two models with the same power, those with higher sensitivity will sound better in noisy places.
It is important to understand that the value of this parameter is different for each manufacturer, because today they have not defined a strict standard for measuring this indicator and the data for the same power models may differ.
What should be the sensitivity in the headphones
In general, the sensitivity of headphones is determined by the sound pressure they reproduce, measured in decibels. This is done after applying an electric signal of one megawatt. Index of 0 decibels is the threshold of susceptibility of the human ear, and 140 decibels is its pain threshold.
To choose a model should be based on their further use. It is important to consider not only this parameter, but also the coefficient of resistance. For a smartphone, player and tablet, models with a sensitivity of 90 decibels and a resistance of 16 Ohms are suitable for ensuring sufficient volume at a low signal power entering the device.
Attention! If the headphones are designed "for the street", then it is better to take models from 100 decibels, otherwise the sound will be very quiet.
To connect the model to the head monitor and sound card without special amplifiers, you should take more sensitive models from 100 decibels and an impedance of more than 150 Ohms. Due to the high value of the latter indicator, it is possible to reduce distortion and improve sound quality.
How can I check the sensitivity
The passport characteristics of the device do not tell exact data regarding sensitivity, since today there is no hard single standard for measuring devices and different manufacturers make measurements in different ways. Therefore, it is impossible to compare two models of the same power, cost and parameters, since manufacturers use different purities for their measurements. So, two popular brands Sennheiser and AKG are measured as follows: one is guided by a general rule and compares this parameter to one kilohertz, and the second uses the IEC 60268-7 standard and compares it to five hundred hertz. Therefore, with the amplitude-frequency characteristic, both devices give different results.
Also, the manufacturer can write an average indicator in the device passport or compare the research result with a peak value over a whole range of frequencies. It can lead to sensitivity to indicators not for home listening to music, but for street use. In this case, it will be lower than nine decibels.
So what to do? How to check the sensitivity? You can’t check it when buying, you should be guided by the rating of devices and reviews from ordinary customers, so as not to buy a bad device with low sound. Everything can be measured only in laboratory conditions at the manufacturer's factory.
Thus, many experienced owners of headphones, choosing their models, answer that you should not carefully look at the sensitivity indicator. You should only pay attention so that their frequency is not less than 20 hertz (for home use).
Important! If you need to choose music inserts or overhead types of headphones for street use, you need to make sure that the indicator is not less than 100 hertz. For a tablet or player, you should take models with the same parameter, but lower resistance - 16 Ohms.
In general, sensitivity affects the sound volume. The higher it is, the louder the sound. When choosing a device, along with this parameter, it is important to consider the resistance so that the sound is not only louder in the conditions of the house and the street on any medium, but also cleaner.
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