240513 – Repost from a My Korean Blog After a long, long wait, my custom IEMs have finally been completed. So I’ll leave a short note here to commemorate the occasion. Traveling all the way from Gyeongnam to HiDition’s headquarters in Incheon would have been too far, so I had my ear impressions taken at the Phonak Hearing Aid center in Seomyeon, Busan. I booked an appointment in advance, and they examined the details of the impression’s surface and took a few more until it looked right. Honestly, at that time I thought, “Once the impressions go from Busan to Incheon, they’ll probably make the molds quickly, right? For the custom order, I chose HiDition’s Viento B version. The R version has a switch to adjust bass and treble but comes with an extra charge. Since I rely heavily on DSP, I saw no need to purchase the R version, so I went with B. If it were possible, I would have liked a custom build with the 14.5mm planar second-generation driver, but after checking ever...
250610 – Repost from a My Korean Blog Why Sound Imaging Differs Between IEMs/Headphones and Speakers Many people tend to give simple explanations such as “the response varies with each person’s fit” or “there is no crosstalk.” In particular, the absence of the binaural effect (the spatial cues you get when listening to speakers) is often emphasized, leading into discussions about crossfeed and even BRIR (Binaural Room Impulse Response). But is the lack of crosstalk really the entire reason why the perceived sound image seems to form inside your head? Of course, there’s some truth to that: where there’s a cause, a result follows. However, merely the absence of crosstalk doesn’t explain the purpose and logic behind speaker XTC (crosstalk cancellation). On one hand, people say it’s a problem because there’s no crosstalk; on the other hand, others try to eliminate crosstalk… Isn’t that odd? As noted above, the absence of crosstalk does serve as a “cause,” but is that the whole sto...