Measurements Nothing Ear (1)
Contents
It turns out to be a fairly complex process to measure wireless, noise cancelling in-ears. This is – we guess – due to two things: we measure through a DSP and then again through Bluetooth compression. In short: as soon as we touch the volume, we already see other, sometimes higher distortion introduced by the volume control. And sometimes crazy artifacts in the response. So we measured with the volume at 100%, but so that also gives distortion, because the unit is at its maximum. In short: there is no ideal scenario in this case.
That behaviour tells us two things: DSPs can introduce distortion that may not be audible, but is measurable. And bluetooth 100% certainly introduces distortion as soon as the volume is touched. But we already knew that. So what can we glean from these measurements? Well… the response is nice, quite neutral tuned for an in-ear in this class. And that is what we hear.
In addition, the distortion is within limits. It seems higher than usual, but keep in mind that this was measured with the volume at 100%. That’s crazy loud. But if we turn the volume down, we get some really crazy results that just can’t be right. We can now immediately see what the resonance point of the unit is: between 2000 and 5000 Hz. Also, we can see that the NC is pushing some distortion; especially in the low end…. which is not surprising… That’s what almost all noise cancelling does.