I feel like this post is going to piss off everyone in this sub on some level.

" if there exists an actual physical difference between the drivers of cheap headphones and lets say a hd560/650/600"
yes

"both the cheap and expensive headphones have the same dynamic 40mm drivers"
no.
they might both be 40mm ones though.

but I never get an actual answer like is there a difference in the actual components of the dynamic driver.

It is always some bs answer like "more neutral sounding"etc

I meant the same size

a toyota corolla and an audi A6 might also have the same size wheels and yet.

you and einstein have the same size head and yet.

what are you talking about they have different engines which is what actually matters and drives up the price you are talking about the superficial similarities. I am refering to the actual components that make up the drivers.

you said size. you're comparing the size.

Sorry if you misunderstood what I meat but do you have any answer or some tangible difference you can point to.

Yes, they are different. One is carefully designed to have the desired characteristics, they other isn’t. Are the materials and sizes different? Not necessarily.

drivers are different, yes.
but sound is not just drivers. it's everything else: the shape of the shell, the material, the pads, etc.

EQ can change a lot, and completely transform a headphone. One thing though is that it's better to EQ with wider filters, as trying to EQ narrow peaks and dips can cause issues. So in that sense, you can EQ most headphones to have very similar sound signatures, but usually there's small details in the Frequency response that are harder or unable to be EQd.

Remember that the frequency response changes quite drastically on your own head, compared to what you see on a measurment rig. So even if you EQ two headphones to have an almost frequency response on a graph, on your own head the FR at your eardrum may be drastically different.

If you were to measure the response of your own ear, and then EQ the headphones to your own ear response, then you can get something much closer. This is one method that Harman used to blind test headphones, they would virtualize different headphones with one test headphone (as well as using the real ones), and they found the results of prefrence tests using virtual headphones were 95% similar to the results using the real headphones.

Magnets can be physically different and have different characteristics. Speaker diaphragm can be a different shape, material. Speaker coil can be made from different wire - thicker or thinner. It can have a different amount of winding on said wire. The actual winding itself can be different.

You cannot EQ a crappy driver to perfection, as it simply does not have a capacity to reproduce all sounds properly without distortion no matter what you do.

Drivers are by far the only thing that makes a headphone sound good. That's like saying the only thing that makes a car fast is the engine.

You also have to consider the housing, cables, material, pads etc.
As well as that, a driver is tuned to sound a specific way. Not that different to how vehicle engines are tuned to perform in a specific way. An F1 car and a Suzuki Ignis both have 1.6L V6 engines with a Hybrid motor but the F1 engine performs better.

I see so the construction itself and the strength of the magnet make the difference. Thanks a lot I appreciate it

coz using EQ and managing sound reflections/dampening backwaves/finding optimum damping factor for the driver are two different things.

Else your headphones would sounds like a mess; your headphone would resonate and have a cancellation effect.

u/oratory1990 please do enlighten us

It's because the answer to your question doesn't really tell much. Two meals can have the same ingredients but differ wildly depending on the quality and ingenuity of the preparation. The divers on a pair of $40 headphones might share material components with the drivers on a $400 pair, but that doesn't speak to the quality of the driver construction, tuning, open design, acoustic decisions re: chassis, cup shape and seal, impedance, etc.

That's why people are telling you about the tuning and sound signature; it's just more relevant to understanding the difference in quality.

There have been minor improvements to driver technology over the last decades, but it hasn't been much. I asked basically this same question a while back and people said the driver itself doesn't make that much of a difference, everything else makes the difference. The biggest thing that impacts sound is the housing design, the shape of it is normaly determined by trying out lots of shapes and seeing what works best. This is also how headphones are tuned to get their unique sound.

The driver still makes a difference. A good driver is going to perform better than a cheaper, smaller driver. The material also matters, lighter materials are able to move faster and distort less at high volumes. The magnets make a difference too. The difference is tuning, even if 2 headphones have the same driver, companies can modify the magnet type, housing, angle, and material to get drastically different sounds.

Some people have also experimented with driver shape. Focal headphones have a M shaped driver, and the Sony Linkbuds had a ring driver. But those are expected to sound different.

"Sounds different" is the answer you're going to get from headphone users (this sub), if you really want to know why they sound different, you need to ask a headphone designer / engineer.

And I don't think that's a huge population of people, so you'd be quite fortunate to find one on this sub who knows the answer and is going to take the time to write an answer you find satisfactory.

My impression, as someone who is not a headphone engineer, is that there are an insane number of variables that go into how sound is perceived through a headphone ("psychoacoustics"), and the way that different headphones design around those variables is complicated. There's certainly more to it than the size of the driver. Like one of the interesting things about the Focal Elegia closed back is that they have sound baffling inside the earcup that dissipates low frequencies, to reduce resonance, and it seems to make them sound more like an open-back headphone. I think another variable is how consistent the left and right ears are in their frequency response, as inconsistency can muddy up the directional imaging. And that's something that depends on really tight controls in the manufacturing process with all the different components, and the way in which they're assembled.

That's just a flavour I've what I've been able to deduce from being around the hobby, I don't really know the answer. I just try out different headphones, and some of them sound better to me than others (in ways that aren't totally captured by frequency response, since I typically EQ all my headphones to the Harman curve)

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yes the drivers are different, the design is different, therefore it sounds different. EQ can make headphones sound more alike to other headphone but it can not do something like changing the sound state

What kind of issues can you run into with narrow peaks/dips?

Since it is measured on a rig, often those peaks will either be in a different area when on your own head. So you might accidentally be EQing the wrong way. As well some narrow dips are phase cancelations in which it doesn't matter if you try EQ it back, the dip will still be there regardless

What you're asking is

Can I tune a civic to be as good as a tuned or not tuned mustang

Not really, no

Because of every single factor, including the drivers

Or

Can I drop a civic engine in a mustang and it be as good as a mustang engine in a mustang

Not really, no

Ah, okay that makes sense and matches my own experience. If I'm making narrow filters I'll usually start with 12+db and sweep the FR with it to pin point what I want to address.

I'll need to look into phase cancellations as I keep seeing that term come up a lot lately.

Thanks!

I completely get what you are saying and the shell even the earcup material and shape affects the sound but if I take the shell of a senn hd600 and replace just the driver with a 40mm or 42mm driver from a 10€ headphone does it sound the same ?

No, it won’t.

No they are not physicaly the same. First of all there are different driver types. Dynamic, planar, electrostatic are the most common (in that order). Also different materials of the mooving part, different thickness, different magnets, differently placed magnets, different driver size, different driver form. Then there is everything that surrounds the driver. Damping, back/lack there off, size within the headphone, driver angle, pad material etc.

There are ALOT of differences but yes the driver itself is verry different usualy. You cant EQ alot but if the drivef is slow or cant moove alot of air at once you will always have a muddy non-dynamic sound no matter what you do.

Go to Aliexpress and search 40mm headphone driver. You'll get so many options at different prices. There are differences.

Cables 💀

> the driver itself doesn't make that much of a difference,

It matters for how much distortion is produced.

I mean it is a bit of an ignorant post. A little bit research would answer OP's questions.

Since everyone has said what I would have said, I would like to add that one difference is the distortion produced by the driver, a cheap 40mm driver in a random amazon headphone usually will distort a lot of the sounds. This can be caused by both the damping of the headphone, and the driver itself and how it has been designed. This would make the sound much less detailed, and dull. There are also “reflections” that a headphone designer would have to take care of, and that is not something you can fix with eq. This can be the foam in the front of the driver, or the foam on the back of the driver. Another major difference is the excursion of the driver, something like a focal clear will have a high excursion driver that would make it have a very dynamic sound, while something like a hd600 wouldn’t sound all that dynamic in comparison. In summary yes there are physical differences, just like how you could have 2 camera lenses made both of glass, one might be super distorted and mess up edges, while the other might be crystal clear.

Ok, here is my take:

1. Even the same model headphones have different drivers. Even for the same headphones, right and left drivers do not match 100%, so obviously, you can not expect other model headphones to have the same driver.

2. No, you can not eq a "bad" driver to perfection since "bad" drivers will have audible harmonic distortion and phase mismatches. Those can not be fixed by eq.

3. There is no perfection in audio, but preferences and signatures are preferred by most people.

4. You can eq a driver with low distortion and no phase cancelations/mismatches (you can look at freq graph, and if there are multiple dips and peaks, that driver most likely has phase cancellation) You can eq that headphone to your liking and it will sound amazing.

Best of luck!

> As well as that, a driver is tuned to sound a specific way

You can change tuning pretty easily, though some drivers distort more than others when you boost certain frequencies. Some though, are basically a blank canvas to tune however you want.

The Raal CA1A was actually designed to have 'as capable drivers as possible,' with the intention that you'll EQ them to sound generally how you want.

Thank you for that more reasonable answer. This guy was just looking for a simple answer, not just a bunch of elitist snark.