Professor Thump,
It occurred to me that the KG 702 could be the assembly for the Custom 3 after I posted my last response. In this view we can clearly see the 2 separate armatures, or more accurately the enclosures for the armatures as they're really inside with the sound exiting out of the small nozzles - somehow being combined into one nozzle somehow (that too can wait for more thorough understanding) and passed through the tip into one's ear as exceptionally high quality sound.
For the KG 534 (or is it 532? - or is 534 the complete assembly and 532 used to identify each armature inside - I don't really need to know) I suspected the dual armatures were in the same enclosure sharing one nozzle somehow - with each armature having different dampening materials and loading.
Yes, please don't post nice expanded images of how these things are put together until the competition has had time to buy a few sets of their own and dissect them.... maybe you'll never be able to show us too much ... we want to keep that special sauce special...
I will try to read through the documents you're referenced if / when I want (or think I need) to better understand the effects of the ear canal on the sound of IEM's. The objective for floor standing speakers is to reproduce perfectly flat full range sound in the room so it makes sense that for IEM's the goal is to produce perfectly flat full range sound in the ear. I suppose the ear canal's effect on the sound gets the most confusing as sound one hears from a live performance or a stereo goes through the same ear canal - so is part of eq for IEM's to compensate for the ear canal's resonant requency required as the outer ear and outermost parts of the ear canal have been removed? (The ear canal is tuned if you will to work with how the outer ear funnels the sound in?) Or is it just the sound behaves differently somehow when it originates in the ear canal? (Biggest difference, as before, is that the outer ear and outermost ear canal has been bypassed). Thinking along these lines, the IMAGE eq for the ear canal would be different for the Cusom models as even more of the ear canal is bypassed as it doesn't really start pumping in sound until the ear canal starts to bend.
I'm probably less confused than before though I can't even pretend to understand much about acoustics or how the ear works.
But we don't really have to know how these things work, we can just stick 'our Custom or IMAGE 'phones in our ears and enjoy.
(Though it is fascinating to understand, or at least pretend to understand, how you get such great sound out of such small devices.)
Thanks for all your hard work and explanations!
I hope the Custom 3 production catches up / picks up so the people patiently waiting can finally get to hear them. I suspect the wait will be well worth it.
Feel the bass in your head! Sticking 'em in my ears since November 2007! - bsam 2007 -
Klipsch - The Environmentally Friendly Speaker Company - bsam 2008 -