Headphone power 65 mW loud enough?

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bananasiong

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Hi,
Recently I found that Maxim has a DAC IC with amplifier built in, MAX9850. According to the datasheet, the max output power for the output power for 32 R headphone is only 65 mW. I wonder, is 65 mW loud enough? My headphone is rated 300 mW max.
 
Hi Banana,
Continuous sound levels over 80dB will damage your hearing.
"Normal" music has a dynamic range of up to 15dB so the peaks can be at 95dB and the average is at only 80dB.
Acid Rock and other horrible "music?" is at max level all the time.

Here are some good quality headphones that produce 103dB with an input of only 1mW. They could literally blow your ears off if they were fed 65mW. The sound pressure would be 121dB. If the music is "normal" then the average sound pressure would be 106dB. Good-bye hearing.

I have had my car's sound system playing "normal" music with peaks of 120dB and years ago I measured peaks exceeding 120dB in discoteques but not for very long, and I can still hear pretty well. I haven't used headphones much.
 

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Lol, it is another scary picture that I dug up from the depths of GOOGLE!

I dont want to know why they had ears in a bag, but it could be anything...

I was thinking of using the simple LM386 or somthing like that, they are so simple to add. I reccomend adding tons of caps to it,to make it sound awesome.
 

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One could calculate an answer if one had the SPL (efficiency) ratings for the specific earphones. That is not the same as the maximum power rating specification of the earphones.

Short of that specification, I would guess that 65mw will provide plenty of volume for most, but YMMV of course.

Lefty
 
**broken link removed**

Is its SPL rated 105 dB? It says the sensitivity.
 
bananasiong said:
**broken link removed**

Is its SPL rated 105 dB? It says the sensitivity.
Click to expand...
That link doesn't work. It takes me back to a duplicate of this page.

Of course the SPL for a certain amount of power in is its sensitivity. Efficiency is different and is not spec'd.
 


It's expected that every generation will hate the next generations music and deny it fits the category. And only the bands that truly suck will play at max levels all the time.
 
audioguru said:
That link doesn't work. It takes me back to a duplicate of this page.

Of course the SPL for a certain amount of power in is its sensitivity. Efficiency is different and is not spec'd.
Click to expand...
LOL, it doesn't work for me too. My headset is SM850 from somic (from China I think) and these are the sped:
 
Hi Banana,
The spec's for your Chinese headphones are useless.
The sensitivity is 105dB with no input.
The sensitivity is also only 96dB with no input.
Which numbers do you believe??

Maybe the input is 1mW. They should say what is the input power to produce the SPL.
 
haha.. It is cheap!
Less than half of the price of Altec Lansing
I think the spec in capital is for the headphone and the spec in small letter is for the mic, but not too sure.
There is no English spec on the packing too.

But I haven't seen any headphone spec's rated the sensitivity with input, they show only the max input power to the headset.
 
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