Headphones

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Can you explain this impedance stuff as I’m your mother? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by MijacOnAir1@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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Quite confused as to why it matters on your headphones, variables, what to choose and what are the pros/cons and supported devices (I.e., phones, laptops, etc). 😅

Big thanks in advance

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[–] blargh4@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

It's kind of hard to explain in a useful way if you're not familiar with the fundamentals of electronics.

When an amp applies a voltage across a headphone, a current flows through it that is proportional to the voltage, and inversely proportional to impedance (aka resistance for DC signals). This is Ohm's law.

But by itself, impedance does not tell you very much, it's just one of the variables you need to plug in to figure out the amplifier requirements. It needs to be combined with the sensitivity of a headphone, which is most commonly specified as the sound pressure level you get when you feed a headphone 1 milliwatt of power, or less commonly, the sound pressure you get when you feed a headphone a 1 volt. If you know how much power (current x voltage) your amp can deliver into a given impedance, then you can calculate how loud it will get.