High sound quality and concha headphones: where are the limitations
Lola Justine Kydia Olivia Blanchard · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2008
Concha headphones (the small type of headphone that rests at the entrance of the ear canal) are the most popular type of headphones for every-day use. However, the sound quality produced by even "high quality" concha headphones is rather poor. This paper gives an overview of the different factors that affect the quality of this type of headphones, describes the measurement difficulties, and presents a model. The leakage between the headphone and the ear changes every time the headphone is inserted in the ear. This alters the perceived sound quality, especially at low frequencies, and makes measurements very difficult. Moreover, because of energy efficiency considerations, a typical transducer design is prone to nonlinear behaviour, and a high distortion rate can be measured for most concha headphones. The measured transducer parameters and leakage have been implemented in a model realised in Simulink. The simulation model, which makes it possible to study the influence of the various parameters including the uncontrolled leakage, is the first step towards developing a compensation technique.