headphones versus IM which one's better when it comes to comfort sound quality and value for money well hey folks i'm Mark Ryan this is Super Review and I've reviewed literally hundreds of IMs and headphones over the year and the truth is that well they both have advantages depending on your use case and what you value but these are things that might not be obvious if you're just getting into the hobby so whether you're getting into audio because you want something for at home music listening or for gaming or for something on the go I really do think it's worth considering both of them and in this episode of Waveguide I'm going to talk about how headphones and IM are different along a couple of categories including comfort some practical reasons you might not be thinking about and of course sound quality and if you like the idea of helpful content like this well you're also going to like our sponsor Hi-Fi Go hi Go is an online retailer they sell headphones and IM's all the latest stuff so if you already know what you want I would check them out i've got them linked in the description down below free shipping worldwide but if you're still trying to figure out between IM's and headphones we'll stick around and we'll talk about that so comfort is going to be the first factor you encounter when you're comparing headphones and IM and frankly I think it's a big reason a lot of people don't get into IM it's just that headphones are a lot more familiar of a form factor for a lot of people whereas IM I feel like they've got a bit of a learning curve to them right the first time you wear an IM you put something inside your ear it might be initially uncomfortable you might not have done that before there might be a little bit of an ick factor but what I'm going to say is that you can get used to this and for me an analogy is like when I grew up my beard for example started feeling hair on my neck in ways that was just kind of scratchy initially but after a couple of days I got used to it and I think it's probably the same thing with you know people wear contact lenses instead of eyeglasses is you're stuffing something inside your eye that can't be comfortable but eventually you get used to it it just kind of falls into the background of your being and IM are at least for me a lot like that now I I see a lot of people wearing TWWs true wireless IM lately and I think that kind of just shows that you don't need to be an audio file to get used to having something inside your ear although I will comment on that that typically audio file IM will fit a little bit deeper in your ears than an AirPod Pro for example so like my wife hates my IM but she has no problem using true wireless IM so there is that now I think however the bigger factor apart from just the initial ickness is the the fact that IM are a little bit more personal than headphones right headphones there's they're a little bit more one-sizefits-all whereas IM's you might need to spend more time finding an IM that fits your ear especially well so the IM that's comfortable for me might not be comfortable for you and vice versa and that's just frankly kind of back to that that idea of there being a little bit of a learning curve with IM for me personally I tend to prefer an IM that fits small something that fits into like the folds of my ear right there so that it's stable and comfortable i think this Sennheiser IE600 is a pretty good example of that and I guess if we're we're keeping tally of things here in terms of comfort again first impressions I'm going to I'm going to give that advantage over here to headphones and for ease of use I think frankly I'm also going to give it to headphones but that's not to say that I don't find IM's comfortable because I wear them all the time on the other hand headphones while they might be more comfortable out the gate they've got some issues that might show themselves more over time for example clamp right a lot of headphones you put them on your head it's going to squeeze your head in order to stay in place and that squeezing that clamp can become an issue for a lot of people over the longer term personally I'm pretty immune to clamp pressure concerns but I know it's a very very common thing that people will cite when they're talking about headphone comfort long term for me more so I'll have issues with pressure points along the top of my head you know within five to 10 minutes I can start to feel that and it can make a headphone frankly really really uncomfortable so clamp can be an issue but it can also be an issue not having enough clamp because you want enough clamp it's going to hold the headphone in place so you don't feel like you're always constantly trying to balance it on your neck uh kind of a similar related issue is just the issue of weight your average headphone is probably going to weigh 300 400 maybe even 500 grams whereas your average IM heck the heaviest IM I've ever measured is about 30 g so about a tenth of the weight of even a lightweight headphone and that is something that will show up over time like the more you wear it you will start to be more aware of that weight personally I find that a headphone that's you know 3 or 400 g I don't really have an issue with your mileage may vary depending on your own tolerances but anything above 400 500 grams you will start to feel over the long term and it's just something you got to be mindful of and then the last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of sort of these long-term impacts is actually heat and this is not something I personally deal with cuz I live in a pretty cool climate but I see this reported by a lot of people who live in warmer more humid climates that overear headphones can be actually kind of uncomfortable because of the heat and the humidity right you've basically are creating a little swamp inside your ear pad where your ear is and this is especially true of a closedback headphone but I think can also be true of an open back headphone so if you're in a warm humid climate that's definitely something that you want to consider of course you know I mentioned that headphones are more of a one-sizefits-all thing but of you're definitely going to have to find out you know for yourself what actually works well for you what kind of weight are you tolerant to what kind of clamp do you like and uh well also what size ear pad do you like personally I like kind of like a mediumsiz ear pad like this where you've got enough room for your ear but it's not so big that it's swimming on my head um yeah I'd say that personally for me this is kind of an ideal form factor for a headphone it's around 300 g or less um which means it's probably going to be made out of plastic and that's fine uh it's got a decent bit of clamp to it so it's nice and stable and so I'm aerodynamic when I fight it makes me aerodynamic when I fight yeah i just generally like the ear cups not too big this is a good mix for me so if we go back to our scorecard in terms of long-term comfort this might not be intuitive for a lot of people but I'm actually going to give this one to IM's now there are also some other practical considerations that you should keep in mind for example do you wear glasses cuz if you wear glasses like me well IM's might have a little bit of an issue where you know you put them over your ear they basically coexist with the frame of your glasses and you might get a little bit of tangling and just you know it's it's it's a bit of a traffic jam there you get used to it and frankly I think that is a pretty minor point maybe a bigger point however would be with headphones which unsurprisingly they fit over the top of your glasses frames which has kind of two potential issues one if you're sensitive to that clamp that I was just talking about having your headphones clamp your glasses into the side of your head might be additionally more uncomfortable but the other thing is that a lot of headphones require they rely on a good seal with the ear pad and your head to get the bass response out of the headphone but when you've got glasses in here you're kind of breaking that seal and you might end up with a suboptimal base response so as far as the scorecard goes in terms of being glasses compatible I'm actually going to give that win to IM another practical consideration a lot of people don't think about until it's a problem is the occlusion effect and to know what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with this effect just start talking or even like humming and while you're humming plug your ears and you're going to notice the sound changes quite a bit and it's probably going to sound a lot more annoying that is the occlusion effect and because IM sit inside your ear and plug your ear and create a seal well these things will create the occlusion effect pretty hardcore now closedback headphones can also create an occlusion effect to some degree although usually not as extreme as IM's but generally open back headphones don't have this issue now that effect that I was talking about it's not just when you're humming it affects you also while you're talking or even if you're doing like exercise and you're running or jumping like it can create this obnoxious sound inside your head and for those reasons like I don't really like using IM for exercise or for gaming when I have to talk with people it's just frankly not comfortable now there are some ways to mitigate the occlusion effect for example just like routing audio from the outside world into your ears while you've got them sealed can solve this problem right for example if you've used AirPods with their transparency mode that's what they're doing and it avoids the occlusion effect or or if you're you know recording a podcast in a studio or something like that if you're self-monitoring your own voice it can avoid that however if you're in a situation where you don't have access to those technologies the occlusion effect here with IM versus headphones can be a big problem and so if we're keeping score here good while talking uh there's very much a big advantage for open back headphones in my opinion now the occlusion effect is related to the next big practical difference between headphones and IM and that is sound isolation and what I mean is that an open back headphone like this doesn't have the occlusion effect because it doesn't isolate sound if you're in a loud environment like an office or public transport all of the sound from the outside environment is going to enter the earup and it's going to hit your ear you're still going to hear it just like normal if you're trying to quiet that stuff an open back headphone frankly is not going to do that and it kind of works both ways like if you're in a quiet environment like a library and you're listening to music especially if you're listening loud well all of the music you're listening to on the headphone is going to leak out the back of the speakers and people sitting around you are going to be able to hear whereas with an IM because these things seal so well and isolate so well you could blast your ears off be sitting right next to somebody and they wouldn't know not that I recommend you blast your ears off in fact one of the nice advantages of this sound isolation is that you can actually get away with listening at quieter volumes because you're not competing with sound from the outside environment so if we're talking about purely from sound isolation I think this is a pretty strong advantage for IM now the next practical difference is pretty obvious but there are some knock-on effects that are not so obvious and that's just that IM are a lot smaller than headphones for example if I'm traveling right throwing a pair of IMs in my bag basically takes up no additional room whereas finding room for a pair of full-size headphones can be a problem in fact a lot of the times I'll bring a couple of pairs of IM with me because it can another advantage of them being small is that at least for me they just feel lighter more free less encumbered when I'm wearing a pair of IM now if I'm sitting at a desk or at home doesn't really make a big difference with a headphone but if I'm sitting on public transport or even sleeping the small size of a pair of IM really does have a pretty strong advantage and yes I sleep in IM's and no I haven't tried it with a pair of headphones i don't think it would work so if we go back to the board in terms of I guess we'll just call this portability uh I'm going to give that one also an advantage to IM's and the last practical consideration before we talk about sound quality is going to be efficiency im are a lot more efficient or sensitive than headphones which is frankly neither a good thing or a bad thing it just has some effects that you should be aware of for example if you plug in a an inefficient headphone like this one into your average laptop or like a video game controller you might find that it doesn't get loud enough whereas IM you're probably not going to have that problem headphones a lot of the times you will need to use an external amplifier although I will say that to a large degree this is kind of overstated in fact frankly off of my MacBook I will listen to pretty much every headphone but nonetheless if you're trying to get things loud IM are going to be a lot more efficient now that's the good part of efficiency but there are some downsides to being as sensitive as IM can be and it kind of comes down to two main categories and again this is going to apply to a lot of times just like the headphone jack on the on your laptop or especially coming out of the back of a desktop computer they often have two pretty sizable issues one is going to be be output impedance the other one is going to be hiss let's talk about the first one output impedance is something you might not be aware of but it is kind of an attribute of the electrical design of your headphone jack that can actually inadvertently shift the frequency response of your headphone or your IM what I mean is that the output impedance can just change the way something sounds in a way that might be good but probably is just going to be weird and um that's something that you have to deal with more with IM is because they are more sensitive to output impedance and then similar there is the fact that a lot of the times cheaper headphone jacks will just have hiss they'll have a noise floor that you can hear when you're using a sensitive IM if you're using a headphone that's not so sensitive it's probably going to cut it out and you'll just never know that there's a hiss there and that's actually better whereas with a sensitive IM it can be an issue so a little bit of a double-edged sword here of course we do have to give an advantage and in terms of efficiency well there is no denying that IM are more efficient than headphones and finally that will bring us to talking about sound quality which you might have thought was going to be the main difference between headphones and IM but frankly for me personally it's kind of the last factor I consider when I'm choosing which form factor to use because the more practical differences are the things that impact me more in day-to-day life whereas the sound quality stuff well they both have some advantages and disadvantages except when it comes to closedback headphones now in my opinion closedback headphones generally kind of suck i know there might be some practical reasons that might steer you toward a closedback versus an open back headphone like you need that sound isolation but in my opinion if you need that sound isolation and sound quality is important I think IM are frankly just flatly better than 99% of closedback headphones out there now there are some good sounding closbacks out there but in my collection there's really just one closback headphone I listen to for fun and it's a $2,000 headphone so I can't really recommend that is generally if we're talking about isolated sound quality frankly IM just have a really big advantage over here now with open back headphones this comparison gets a lot trickier partly because personal preference is going to play a big part in this frankly but also because anything I can say there's a lot of exceptions to so generalizations are hard to make but I'll make a few anyway like generally I think that IM have better bass than headphones especially if you want a lot of bass an open back headphone like this generally it struggles to give you a lot of bass it even struggles to give you neutral extended bass like the the Plan headphones that are really well known for having great bass they basically just achieve neutral bass in most cases whereas with IM's like neutral bass is easy that comes free and if you want elevated clean bass there's a lot of options with that as well in the overear open back headphone market there are some elevated bass headphones but usually it comes at the expense of being kind of muddy and congested whereas IM generally you can have a lot of bass with them and still have it be nice and clean it doesn't bleed into the mid-range it's tight and it's punchy it's fun and it's energetic so that's definitely going to be an advantage for IM is going to be the bass now when it comes to the mid-range and specifically creating like a neutral natural sounding mid-range i think that headphones have a real advantage here and it comes down to a nerdy but real factor of your own human anatomy right so when we use this word natural or neutral we're kind of describing the way that sound things sound in the real natural world and when things happen in the natural world the sound happens it interacts with your own human anatomy before it reaches your ear and you perceive something that sounds natural if you were to measure what it sounds like at my eardrum versus your eardrum we'd actually measure something that's a little bit different and when you have a headphone like this that's playing outside your ear well what your ear is doing to the sound doesn't matter so much whereas when it comes to an IM because this thing is actually going to bypass your outer ear and enter your ear canal when they're designing the sound in this it's going to have to make assumptions about what your head anatomy would do to the sound and that plays a big part in terms of the tamber the naturalness of the mid-range so for that reason frankly I feel like headphones do generally have a very real advantage when it comes to uh mid-range so yeah we'll we'll we'll give that nod over here to headphones and then when it comes to the treble the high frequency areas of music it's kind of a similar story i think the headphones have a bit of an advantage for a very similar reason although the issues are a little bit more acute when it comes to treble high frequency IM are just more likely to have treble issues right they're more likely to introduce sibilance in your recording or create sharpness and like high hats and and symbols and stuff like that and that's just because of the way that they fit inside your ear headphones are a little bit I mean they're not immune to treble issues in fact some of the most uncomfortable treble experiences I've had are with overear headphones they're just going to be more consistent from person to person whereas IM are going to vary a lot as it pertains to your own human anatomy in fact even with your own human anatomy your individual anatomy with one IM you can change the way that treble sounds just by trying out different ear tips and trying different insertion depths so just generally when it comes to creating a nice consistent smooth treble experience I'm going to say that headphones do have a bit of an advantage here although it can be somewhat mitigated with again a learning curve now if I were to summarize those last two points in less technical terms I'd say that IM are more personal right you need to find the one that works for you whereas headphones can be a little bit more universal but that's really just talking about anatomical differences there's still preference differences right do you want a headphone that's more bassy do you want something that's more neutral do you want something more relaxed or you want something more excited and engaging or maybe you're like me and you kind of just want all of them and in that case I feel like IM have another advantage in that I think there's just more variety in IM tunings partly I think it has to do with the fact that there are anatomical differences and there's like a demand there's a market demand and a reason to create a bunch of different tunings but I also think that part of it is just the IM are a newer technology and there's like a lot of energy going into making new IMs maybe even too much but there's new IM coming out all the time whereas I feel like in the headphone world I don't want to call it stagnant but like this is the best sounding headphone one of the best sounding headphones it came out about 30 years ago so in the IM world there's just always something new always something engaging and while there's a lot of different sounding headphones I don't find there's a lot of range of sounds that I enjoy let me put it that way whereas in the IM world there's a lot of different types of sounds that I find myself gravitating toward so when it comes to this concept of choice frankly I'm going to give the advantage to IM's now the last point I want to make on sound quality is going to be like price toerformance ratio or how much do you have to spend to get good sound and again I think I'm going to give the advantage to IM but it's up to a certain point right if your budget is $50 there's really only a handful of headphones that I would recommend and they're all named costs and they all kind of have the same limitations whereas in the IM world 50 bucks gets you access to some really good sounding stuff and if you've got a hundred bucks in your budget well you've got a lot more IM to choose from and frankly no other headphones I would recommend i would still recommend going with the cost stuff and really I think that advantage carries through up to about 200 bucks now once you hit 200 300 bucks you start to be able to afford something like this a Sennheiser HD600 which frankly I think is like one of the best sounding headphones out there so at this point the price advantage kind of goes away and it really is going to come down to personal preferences but overall again because of that lower price budget I'm going to say that IM's have the advantage here now there are other differences in terms of how headphones and IM sound but frankly I have a hard time describing them or quantifying them and ultimately I just think both headphones and IM sound fantastic they're both capable of scratching that audio file itch for me although if you follow this channel you probably know that I do personally gravitate more toward IM overall but it really isn't for any of the practical kind of rational reasons that we've been talking about i just think they're small they're cool and collectible i like them which is to say like I don't know hopefully all this rationalization has helped you make a decision for yourself but if you're looking into IM versus headphones and you just find yourself gravitating toward one or the other like don't feel like you have to justify it with any rationalization just you know know what you're getting into and enjoy the hobby and with that said a quick reminder that Hi-Fi Go is making this content possible if you want to make your next purchase of an IM or a headphone I've got them linked in the description down below and while you're down there if you haven't already please like the video subscribe to the channel ding the YouTube bell join me at Discord and I'll catch you in the next super review cheers yeah this review is 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