LET’S TALK ABOUT TUNING SWITCHES AND WHETHER THEY ACTUALLY CHANGE THE SOUND OF IEMS
Something that I’ve always wondered in regards to IEMs with tuning switches is just how much the switches actually change the sound. And while you can hear the audible difference on some configurations, you kinda wonder whether they actually do change something or it’s all placebo
And now that I have my own IEC711 rig, I can finally measure the actual differences between the switches. One thing that squigs/databases don’t show is the differences in volume between the different configurations.
Now I’m not a sound engineer or even an electrical engineer to explain why the volume shifts between the different modes. But this was a very interesting discovery as volume is also a factor when listening to IEMs. Check out the Fletcher-Munson curve if you want to know about how volume affects our listening experience, but basically, the higher the volume we listen to, the more emphasized the bass and treble are while the mids are more emphasized on lower volumes.
In the case of the Polaris here, you can see that the last switch seems to change the gain while the rest of the switches change the bass.
What do you think? Do you think a gain/volume change is something that should be included in an IEM? Or do you think companies should simplify their switches? Or hell, do you think switches should even be a thing. Let me know below!
