Man kan ringe til Niels fra Skrot er Godt, sĂĽ kommer han og henter dit gamle jern. Kiloprisen, eller her nok nĂŚrmere gramprisen, er sikkert ikke helt som med guld
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Claus, skaberen af SB-7 har truffet nogle bevidste valg efter omfattende eksperimenter. Fravalget af custom mold er et af dem. Herunder et par citater fra
interviewet med ham.
WSR Reber: What distinguishes your IEMs from the numerous IEM designs and implementations on the market?
Kucherenko: As I already mentioned, before my goal was to pass the torch of home high-end audio to a new field of portable audio.
As a hard-core audiophile for the last 25 years, Iâve been disappointed with the lack of like-minded IEM manufacturers (I met and interviewed some of them for a Russian audio publication). To reiterate, they were thinking about âaccuracyâ but left an impres- sion on me that they didnât think itâs worth any trouble to strive âbeyond that.â
So, as I saw nobody (yet) go âbeyond that,â I decided to peek there myself, to try to see what can be hidden there.
Iâll give you a brief list of what I did, so you have an idea. But bear in mind that I made no discoveries whatsoever, and as anisolated feature all of my solutions are commonly used in the IEM field.
To tell you the truth, this project, in terms of possible IEM developmental stages, was more about my exploration, identity, and concern than about my technical competence.
What distinguishes my effort, first and foremost, is that I was not afraid to combine all of them in a single design. Despite possi- ble sonic gains, due to some form factors and ergonomic considerations, a typical IEM manufacturer would avoid such combinations not to limit an appeal for a product in the market place by too much.
Second, my procedure of trial and error building prototype after prototype was based on the devotion of a hardcore audiophile to bring the IEM sound as much as possible to the sonics of a no-holds-barred home audio system Iâve been using myself.
So hereâs the list of the features:
The First: Itâs supposed to be a deep insertion design, which allows sealing the ear channel close (an average of 5 to 8 mm in my case) to the ear drum. As the ear channel constantly narrows in the vicinity of the eardrum, safety is not an issue here.
There are a lot of reasons why this procedure allows you to get the best sound from IEM, but I am not going to dwell upon that at this time.
The Second: The final visual appearance of the product doesnât have a universal appeal, as itâs a fully hand-made product. But what does matter is the mechanical and electrical reliability of its construction, which is very important in intensive and long-term portable use, with its constant mechanical stress on the IEMs, its connecting elements, and its connecting cable. The cable can be easily repaired or replaced with a spare one.
The Third: These IEMs are intended to be used in an excessive external noise environ- ment, therefore, their design provides suffi- cient ear channel acoustical and mechanical (that means the noise generated by the con- necting cable) isolation at its very tip.
The Fourth: The IEMs should be positioned as deep as possible in the ear chan- nel, preferably close or at its second bend, the spot of transition from cartilage tissue to the bone tissue (itâs a well-established fact in audiology that such a position allows to avoid pain when touching the thin skin further down the bone part, and at the same time provides a minimal âocclusionâ effect).
The Fifth: All the drivers in the earphone are positioned at the same axis, and this axisâ direction is, as much as possible, paral- lel to the direction of soundwavesâ propaga- tion along the ear channel.
The Sixth: The IEM is a fully differential design ready made to work in a two-way active system with two separate amplifiers.
Throughout my 20+ yearsâ worth of home audio experience I learned all the advantages of using active multi-way home audio systems, so this two-way active earphone system can be used with a specially designed and built dedicated DAC/DSP/two- way electronic crossover/two dedicated balanced amplifiersâall in one box (a separate offshoot from this IEM project).
The Seventh: Via a special mini XLR-mini jack adapter this IEM can work with any music player or a smart phone.
If you have to use the IEMs with a portable audio player that is when you can-not use the dedicated DAC/DSP/crossover/two amplifiers capability. I wanted to avoid the use of any passive crossover on the IEMs to avoid the passive filtersâ inherent distortions. Besides, speaking of absolute, I was aware of the complexity of the passive crossoverâs implementation within physical dimensions of a portable device so I was reluctant to even consider using it.
So this IEM doesnât have any passive filters, only master resistors.
The Eighth: The combination of seven drivers in both left and right channel and their acoustic loading characteristics is selected to avoid usage of any passive filter- ing to achieve the seamlessness of sound. The sound outlets are of maximum diameter and of shortest lengths possible.
One driver is ânakedââthat is itâs got no tubing at all; it shoots directly into the ear channel.
I was anticipating that the driversâ selec- tion process is going to be long and painstaking and has to be performed only after all seven previous conditions are fulfilled. And I was determined to consider all the Balanced Armature driver options available.
As the IEM seals close to the ear drum, all the open ear resonances are lost, so to restore the natural sound perception and presentation, the combination of the drivers in the IEM should resonate at the lost resonancesâ frequencies. This challenge was successfully met in the final design, and the natural high-frequency response is support- ed. As a result of it, the sound of the IEM is perceived outside the head.
The Ninth: The connecting cable was selected with its sonic virtues as a top priority. At the same time, as its mechanical prop- erties still do matter, the final version of the cable is completely applicable with its specific application and âtear and wearâ status.
With the help of cable guru Chris Sommovigo of Stereolab, after several iterations a dedicated IEM audiophile cable was born and being used in this IEM.
The Tenth: No additional ready-made acoustic filters are used (with the sole exception of necessary tube outlets acting as such filters, leading to the drivers).
I decided that the common âBand-Aidâ approach of using such industry-standard filters allows you to cut some corners but brings much more harm to the sound than does any good.
WSR Reber: How do you optimize a balance between sonics and form ergonomics in the design of earphones?
Kucherenko: Briefly speaking, as much as I could. Setting the sonic quality as an uppermost top priority, obviously I ran into some tough decisions I had to make over ergonomics in the design.
Custom ear-mold IEMs are the opposite: a great ergonomics idea and a fantastic logistics scheme, but, in my view, too com- promised sonically. First of all, all the drivers in custom ear monitors are shooting from different angles (up to 90 degrees in a typical example). Second, they are located, in most of the cases, outside the entrance to the ear channel, emitting the sound through narrow, long, and curved sound bores. Also, to mend all the problems associated with a specific model, appealing to the lowest common denominator on the marketâthat is to ensure that this modelâs form ergonomics would provide a comfortable fit to all these people who would use it. You canât avoid a usage of some crude (because of physical space limitations) passive electrical filtering and some crude acoustical filtering as well.
In a typical universal fit an IEM model, especially a multi-driver one, the off-axis compromises and filtering are even more dramatic.
Can you imagine what kind of sound youâd get from a loudspeaker with all its driv- ers, including tweeters and midrange driv- ers, pointing in all the different directions, up to 90 degrees apart? And itâs exactly what happens in a typical multi-driver IEM. Add a long curved bore to this analogy, and itâd be like listening to a loudspeaker playing in a living room but from your bedroom via a long curved corridor. Itâs not surprising that audio- philes, accustomed to sitting in a âsweet spotâ in front of a properly set up pair of loudspeakers, donât like a typical IEM sound.
My goal was to re-create, as much as possible, a ânear-fieldâ listening experience for the IEM.
For that I had to move the drivers as close as possible to the eardrum, first, and place all the drivers on axis with each other, second, and, finally, to direct this common axis, as much as possible, straight to the ear drum. In the latter aspect of the design, deep insertion is of a big help.
To reach this IEM âsweet spotâ position- ing I could not avoid compromises in its ergonomics in terms of a universally comfort- able fit. But at this stage of development, as much as I tried, I could not go any further in terms of making the IEM appealing to a wider audience. The driversâ compliment is crucial to attain the sound I want, and the physical configuration of the final assembly is the sole restricting factor to achieve this wide appeal. There is no doubt that some future attempts to improve the ergonomics and to expand the appeal of such-like IEMs by using different drivers and technologies can be very successful. So, we will see.
Realizing the futility of competing with the Goliaths on their own turf, I didnât see much sense in a âhomebrewâ imitation of what was already done by âthe properâ IEM manufacturersâbe it a universal tip or a custom ear- mold type of solution.