Apple iPod In-ear Headphones Review - Performance |
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Published on May 12, 2008 Comment on this |
| Summary First off, we'd just like to say that the Apple iPod in-ear headphones were insanely difficult to test. The partial in-ear design of these meant that it was very difficult to place the headphones in HATS's ears, which made finding a reliable data set really hard to do. This underlines a problem with headphones like this; if they aren't placed in your ears properly, audio quality will plummet. Specifically, if they aren't placed properly against the ear canal, the low frequency response drops right off, making bass sound weak and flat. Given how frequently these headphones will slip out of place, this means you'll be constantly readjusting them in order to maintain good quality. Our testing process utilizes equipment and software that many manufacturers use. To simulate a human with superhuman hearing, we use a head and torso simulator (HATS). We then collect and analyze the data using an audio analysis program called SoundCheck (produced by our friends at Listen, Inc). To learn more about how we make our scientific discoveries, read this article. Surprisingly, these headphones didn't perform as poorly as we'd have thought. They did all right with frequency response. Distortion was pretty bad, especially with bass sounds. This is typical for in-ear headphones, since the small size of the drivers that produce the sound doesn't leave much room for them to vibrate. Tracking was only bad towards the lower and higher frequencies. We actually would've expected better performance from in-ear headphones in terms of isolation, but since these don't squeeze inside your ear canal, it makes sense that they wouldn't block out as much sound as those that do. They performed very well on leakage, however: no one will hear your jams but you. Frequency Response (5.10) This test measures how the headphones emphasize each frequency. Typically headphones will boost lower or higher frequencies to make them better for a certain genre of playback. Therefore, we don't necessarily look for a flat line. What we do look for are spikes or sudden dips, and the overall trend of the line. When two neighboring frequencies are emphasized differently, it can lead to your playback sounding unbalanced. Frequency response can also differ per channel so we measure the left and right separately. In the graph below, the green line represents the left channel's performance, and the red line is the right ear bud.  Like bass? Don't get these headphones. Some in-ear headphones have trouble with bass due to their size: they don't have enough room to create the big, powerful movement of air that good bass requires. Given a good seal between the headphones and the ear, however, some in-ear headphones can get close to the booming bass better than larger headphones produce, since there's only a small amount of air that has to be moved. But the iPod in-ear headphones don't create a good seal and don't have the best hardware, so their bass response was weak. There's a similar problem at the higher end, where the response quickly drops off. This means that both low and high frequency sounds will be a little weak, with the mid-range sounds coming across as stronger.  Again, bass proves a problem. We were registering almost 3% distortion in the lower frequencies; a significant amount of distortion that could be easily heard. We often see some distortion in the extreme lower end, but seldom this much, and never extending into the middle range. There was little or no distortion in the higher frequencies, though.  The iPod headphones didn't do so badly here. Again, there were issues with bass, and emphasis shifted erratically between channels -- your bass will appear to jump from left to right without warning. After the trouble with the bass, tracking levels out nicely, albeit slightly in favor of the left side. Towards the high end, the iPod headphones actually hold it together a lot better than most headphones. Overall, not bad, Apple; not bad.  Typically, in-ear headphones do well on this test, because they are fashioned after ear plugs. These, however, don't so much plug your ear canals as sit outside them and obscure them a bit. Thusly, they only received a slightly better than average isolation score. Bass sounds will only be slightly blocked as they march past these headphones and into your head. Higher frequencies will have a much harder time finding their way into your ears. Overall, the performance is decent, but don't expect them to block as much noise as a pair (such as the Etymotic ER6i or Shure SE-210s) that fit right into the ear canal. |
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