spuriae

Myth: High Impedance Headphones Are Harder for Motherboards to Drive

One of the most common questions on PC forums is whether a motherboard is capable of powering <X impedance> or <insert headphone here>. Almost every time, someone will suggest that high impedance headphones are harder to drive and low impedance headphones are easy to drive. Others may chime in, quoting a manufacturer’s specification that, say, …

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ASR Sensitivity Conversion

AudioScienceReview has headphone measurements, many of which feature sensitivity expressed as mV required to reach 94dB. I’ve converted ASR’s sensitivity measurements, as of the current date (06 January 2022), to the more standard dB/1mW form. The formula to do this is: Sensitivity in dB/mW = 94dB – 10*log10((mV for 94dB)^2/(Impedance at 1kHz)/1000). It’s interesting to …

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Cosmos ADC Mains Noise

The levels discussed here are probably irrelevant to any practical application. This is a silly topic, but there’s a slight chance it might help someone troubleshoot something, someday. Here is an FFT of an A-grade E1DA Cosmos ADC with nothing plugged in. The settings are unreasonable; 160 averages of 4M Length: about 2 hours of …

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