2:58 *vsauce music starts playing*

As a pro musician maybe I can help shed some light on this: IEMs were originally designed to be monitors for musicians to hear each other on stage in a much better way than the wedge speakers we originally used. They helped isolate the sound so there is less chance of hearing loss, and they're instantaneous since they're in the ears rather than a few feet away which drastically can help timing. Over time, a third function of IEMs started to develop: Instrument separation. By putting multiple sound drivers on each iem, it helps spread out the sound more allowing each instrument to be heard without blending in with the other instruments. IEMs can have 5+ drivers in them meaning 10 total "Speakers" in your head. This can be mistaken for better detail since it's easier to pick out the full timber of an instrument or sound whereas most headphones or speakers will blend those instruments together so some of the frequencies end up overlapping and fine details end up lost in the mix. At low price points, this can definitely make a difference in the perceived quality of the iems but we can't forget that separating the sounds is not actually increasing the quality of the sounds. This is why high end headphones seem to blow the sound quality of iems out of the water.

My definition of detail is how much individual sound/instrument can be distinguished with clarity, so my definition of detail kinda goes hand in hand with how good the separation is

I’ve always felt detail comes down to (1) speed (2) finding ways to bring quietest parts of a song step forward so they are not lost, and (3) handling busy audio moments competently and coherently

Thank you for the input Idubbbz! I didnt know u were an audiophile until now

I love all the takes everyone has on this!! Thanks DMS for including me in this discussion! Video came out great. Big shout out to other other reviewers with valid takes!

Loved the production quality of this video. And the way you incorporated those other opinions is so aesthetically pleasing. Thank you for this experience.

I think “detail” is a broad category that branches out into all other aspects of the sound, like “soundstage” “imagining” “separation” “accuracy” etc. All of these subcategories will share “detail” as a defining characteristic in our subjective judgment of sound quality. We listen for “details” in bass response as well as treble response. Higher detail makes “separation” more apparent and adds to the accuracy within the soundstage of well recorded music. Detail is not just about treble but is easier to detect in the higher frequencies.

For me Detail is simply the more amount of things i can hear in a track. Some would say that how clear or well defined it sound is detail but i like to term that precision or definition.

Funny…. I have literally been thinking about this the last six months. I understand the complexity of the question ….however, as a 60 year old audiophile ….I’m increasingly starting to look sideways at frequently hyped headphones and increasingly I’m turning to my IEM collection for ease, weight, compactness and yes for detail as well.

Comfort while listening is the single most import thing (To me anyway) and I still haven’t found a pair of over ear cans, that don’t make me uncomfortable after an hour or so, even though I feel the their overall sound quality is slightly better than IEM’s. As subjectivity goes though, there is no wrong way, as long as it makes you happy. Great video👍🏻

Should have had a short clip of Blaine saying "what the heck to you mean by detail?"

Just going to comment on how nice your cinematography and lighting are in this video. I tend to think of detail as the ability to pick out individual parts in a mix, wheras lower detail things (maybe due to intermodulation distortion) tend to blend into one mass of sound. My ER4's were one of the first things that I had the feeling of actually hearing the reverb added to a track, instead of it blending in to the driver decay. The Sundara is a good second and has better tuning. The ER4 is well tuned almost diffuse field, but flat. I EQ it to give it that -1db/oct slope thats consistent with good reference speaker setups in a treated room. I think the headphone show knocked that reference curve out of the park.

I’ve been watching your videos for years now, and this one of the best (if not THE best) topics you’ve broached. Fantastic question and I love the answers. To answer the question about what detail is: I consider detail to be how close it can get to reality, not so much in tone but in presentation of what is actually produced. I’m familiar with the violin. I’m familiar with the sound the bow makes when it scratches the string as it switches directions. The ability to reproduce that sound accurately helps ground me on what “detail” is, since it’s usually such a fine, quiet sound that you HAVE to know what you’re listening for to find it. Detail is the ability to reproduce those fine details realistically. (Provided that the source is appropriately captured and transferred.) This is why I consider things like the 560S to be detailed, but the Bathys to be less so: the 560S show me how things are, where as the Bathys contours the experience for greater aural comfort, its warmth covering some of that detail. Then again, I’ll happily spend 8 hours with the Bathys and tire of the 560S quickly unless I’m working. Keep up the great work.

Great video! "Audiophile terms" really are something that can be confusing since they aren't always clear on what is meant. Usually, I'll avoid terms like detail, speed, ect. because while it may describe a perception of how something may sound, it can imply some physical properties which may not actually be going on, and it can confuse the viewer. I think the difficult part with "detail" especially is, what does the reviewer mean? Is it the best FR for your HRTF? Is it better perception of small nuances which may be induced by certain small peaks and dips which can overcome some masking effects and emphasize things like trailing ends of tones? Is it something else? There's so much to unpack that sometimes these terms can be more confusing when used casually, and when different reviewers have different definitions. (Edit are just to clarify what I meant at the time of writing)

I always thought about detail being a step beyond separation. If you listen to the same mix in different cans, using one of them it will be easier to focus on individual different instruments. Detail is how much "detail" you can hear about each instrument, the hum of an amp, the twang of a string, an overtone muddled out by another headphone. I don't think IEM's or headphones are more detailed than each other, its 100% individual. Basically with how much granularity and resolution the drivers can recreate an area of the frequency spectrum accurately.

Detail, to me (a non-audiophile, non-expert), is the ability to isolate different instruments in a recording and being able to listen to them exclusively via focusing on them (meaning all instruments are playing and can be heard, but you can focus on any single instrument you want and hear it very clearly, almost as if they were playing alone). Sometimes with a very good recording of an orchestra, I can isolate 1st string versus 2nd string as they are playing; it's a surreal experience. I use Sennheiser HD660S (original) with an Objective2+ODAC.

“It doesn’t matter how detailed your headphone is, I will destroyed it all” - j-pop mixer compressing music to bits

What if our hearing, being directly connected to the brain, and we know the brain has to < forget> in order to work, the filter with audio ... imagine everything from the string/finger noise of the bass player to where his/her sound source is in the room compared to everything else

I consider detail to be how accurately can a headphone reproduce complex sounds. This means keeping proper/accurate volume ratios between the different sounds in the mix (wich often times means handling a big dinamic range across all sound frequencies), and also not introducing "new sound" or distortion.

I think the best way to quantify detail in a way most people can understand is how close a headphone or IEM can faithfully reproduce the recording we're listening to. In a lot of ways, I feel like my IE900s have come a bit closer to doing that for me than my HD800's surprisingly enough. I grab my IEMs so much more often for that reason. Not that the HD800 is bad by any means, but its hard to go back to my HD800's sometimes because of it.

Stellar Video from the storyline, to substance, to production. Really well done! Resolve nailed it for me, I think the closer the speaker is to my ear drum then the more I hear based on how air moves and things that can obstruct its movement, like my outer ears. I will add that detail for me also has to do with how "black" the background is on my listening device, RS8 Black as night hence a ton of detail in strings and high hats for instance, Matrix Element i4 some background noise on my IEM's so I lose HOW WELL I CAN HEAR some of that "detail" in the strings and high hats again for instance. So yes there are many aspects to this well deserved topic. Thanks

This video and the comment section are very meaningful. The performance of the microphone, which is called the "eardrum", differs from person to person. If there is a correct answer, it lies in what more people feel. So I think it's very meaningful for so many people to give their opinions.

To me, the term details is pretty much a combination of different things like imaging, treble extension, speed, clean soundings and separation.

As an audio engineer, from my own experience IEMs are more revealing as they have more dynamic range and you can hear low level information better that is what most people refer to as detail

These days I'm much more measured, but I have had moments where I hear more. My Elex renders cymbals well, they seem to be everywhere. Yet I remember standing at a traffic light, listening to "Songbird" on IEM's and suddenly becoming aware that Lyndsey Buckingham was plucking strings in the background. Kind of spooked me. I also have an SACD remix of Oasis' "What's the story Morning Glory" that gets rid of the "wall of noise" so you can actually hear them play, and there is a moment when "Champagne Supernova" gets serious where I can hear somebody playing an amazing guitar riff in my right ear where the main guitar is on my left. The way IEM's open up sound, is astounding. I own many headphones, and many more IEM's just bought the Chu2 for my son, it's kind of a hybrid as I'm using the cable and vinyls from the salnotes Zero Mecha which I bought on a prime sale. The IEM is meh but the accessories are amazing. So yes I would concur that IEM's have detail in spades, especially modern in ears from the past two years or so.

'we're just listening to wiggly air and having a good time' gold

this video sums up my audiophile journey as a whole. everything is ambiguous!!! even the experts couldn't agree to such a basic concept as 'details'. glad I found my perfect sets and left the rabbit hole pretty early 😉

This dude talks like Agent Smith

Aaaaah, I have had so, so many discussions on this and I 100% agree that detail is different things to different people. But I also think that it's likely a collection of factors combined for each person. For me, I hear detail primarily as a function of frequency response balance, but also, I theorize, as a function of driver displacement for a signal at a given voltage & current. For example, if I play a particular frequency at, say, 0 dBFS and then play the same frequency at -6dBFS through a transducer, the transducer should displace air for the second signal half as far as the first signal. If it displaces further, I'd likely call it more detailed and if it displaces less than that, I expect I'd call it less detailed. This is something I really want to test, I just haven't had time to do so.

Love your content DMS! Keep it up.

Indeed, we’re all just listening to wiggly air, but as a non-audio pro, I find that having more drivers in IEMs helps in separating the lows (like leaves rustling or distant footsteps), mids (vocals, music, cars), and highs (gunshots, engine noise, explosions). Dedicated drivers for each frequency range can make the sound clearer and more detailed. Idk realistically how useful a dedicated DAC is. But I heard that paired with IEM’s unlocked the frequency range massively and makes them sound even more clearer and better, as well as provides IEMs with more power compared to just using the AUX port. I still bought a wireless adapter to see if I notice any difference. I’m struggling to let go of wireless. It’s so much better.

9:28 I need that on a T-shirt

I'm going to go the other way about it and say that producing something akin to a "standard recording" that listeners can use to judge headphone "detail" would be one way to start. A standard 3 minutes sound file produced with an accompanying checklist that you can tick off and check against to see how much "detail" you heard. Over time you can build upon the recording to add more things that is defined as "detail".

I have the Sennheiser IE 300, they feel the most "detailed" than any other headphone / IEM I have. The IEMs I have feel more close then the headphones, but I can hear more clear layers if that makes sense. What I love about my Hifiman R7DX (headphones) is the impact that the bass has and how "open" they feel. The one thing that might be an unfair comparison in my gear is that I do not have a ~300$ headphone to compare to the IE 300 (retail 300$ but I got a deal for ~150$ new).

For me, detail is like the contrast setting on a television screen. When set properly, it defines the clarity of images on the screen and makes the picture come alive. Detail in music is the clarity of each note in contrast to the room. Good detail seems to make the sound 3 dimensional and also create a sense of feeling. More detail means the impact of percussion instruments , the plucking of stringed instruments, the air from wind instruments and voices have more presence.

Side Salad for the win!

Thanks for this informative and easy to understand video DMS 👍 short and sweet and to the point 😊 (sigh) why can't more reviewers use this format 🤔

I think the correct answer is that being detailed really includes all the different aspects of hearing into a recording. So room acoustic reverbs, hard to hear background sounds, texture of instuments, resolution of instruments, imaging, seperation, and everything else there is to hear. Id be curious to know if that is the way reviewers are using it, though i kindof suspect that to be the case.

You can look at detail as resolution and the definition of resolution in terms of vision and displays because they have a clear definition and was to measure. Resolution is the smallest distance required to tell 2 things apart (simplified definition). And it's easy to measure the resolution of a monitor by counting the pixels or PPI. Relating that definition to sound, I treat resolution and detail as the ability to clearly hear all aspects of a sound, hear all instruments and sounds in a song clearly. You could say more detail makes it feel life you are listening to the instrument or singer and not a recording of it. Same with video, more detail makes it feel like that thing is real in front of you and not dust being displayed on a screen.

tl;dr: It's all in the frequency response. For me, objective "detail" or "resolution" (an idea albeit initially planted in my mind by Sharur's long headphone video as well as one of the main EQ-by-ear tutorials I consulted early on) as a property of sound systems is simply related to the smoothness of the actual frequency response reaching your eardrums and the relative levels of the frequency bands (if you don't have in-ear microphones, you can check this for yourself by listening to sine sweeps), plus their "synergy" with how the music was mixed (mixers may adjust frequency bands to make things sound right on their studio monitors which may not necessarily be perfectly neutral or match your own playback system's frequency response, or your preferences may differ from the mixer's). All the information that exists in the music can be decomposed into sinusoids of different frequencies and phases that change in amplitude over time, whereby the frequency response simply tells you how the sound system "filters" (controls what passes through) that content. If the frequency response goes up to 20 kHz without being significantly diminished relative to the rest of the frequency response, then it objectively can resolve the "fastest" or "tiniest" details (though other content might obscure perception of such). What matters then is the _balance_ of all this information. If there are no major dips in the frequency response, then no "details" are being diminished. If there are no major peaks, then there would be no cases of certain frequency content being overamplified and thus masking adjacent frequencies. Treble peaks could cause the music's noise floor to sound amplified, obscuring the subtler sonic events, whereby EQing those peaks down can create a "black background" from which those subtleties can emerge more clearly, that lack of overamplified noise possibly also improving the sense of spaciousness. "Detail" could also simply be a relative thing from one's hearing one headphone bring certain frequencies forward that the previous headphone didn't have as forward. Anyone with EQ can add a low-Q peaking filter to some frequency and artificially amplify the frequency content in that region, effectively bringing those "details" forward, but then that could sound unnatural, be objectively incorrect relative to your ears' actual HRTF, or cause details elsewhere in the audio band to sound diminished by comparison. Distortion and sufficiently delayed reflections as in many speaker listening rooms can obscure detail if not introduce grain incorrectly interpreted as more detail, causing the real details to be lost within said noise. Another sort of noise contributor could be the decay of transients as can be analyzed from a sound system's "cumulative spectral decay" (CSD). If a transducer is highly underdamped and takes a long time to stop, then those frequencies will continue to erroneously ring, possibly contributing to a noise floor obscuring some of the real details. Then for "accuracy", if you stick in-ear microphones into your ears and sit in front of a neutral point source speaker, you will discover the shape of how your ears naturally amplify and diminish certain frequencies. You will also discover that your ears for sound sources coming from a specific direction will incur certain phase cancellations ("nulls" or "notches") such that "details" at certain frequencies would never be heard. Regardless, from my measurements, these frequency responses are generally quite smooth (when using a small impulse window to remove the comb filtering caused by reflections), the "sharpest" parts being those natural phase cancellations; my in-ear measurements of the Sennheiser HE-1 and Stax SR-X9000 (this one I am not allowed to share as of yet) shows exceptionally smooth frequency responses with no major peaks or nothing hard to EQ down, and as such are indeed objectively very "detailed". Playback from perfectly flat and ultra-low-distortion speakers in an anechoic chamber would be exemplary of perfect audio playback that neither diminishes nor boosts any frequency content within the music beyond what is naturally done by your ears. In practice, full free-field "ear gain" can sound pretty bright, but my previous very flat Meze Elite hybrid pads EQ with comparatively lower ear gain levels closer to Harman levels (and also comparable to the Sennheiser HE-1's and Stax SR-X9000's levels of flatness for in-ear canal entrance measurements) and as fine-tuned for my ears to eliminate peaks simply sounded exquisite. The only remaining frontier for me is to combine ultra-low distortion with exquisitely sharp _and_ clean (super-fast decay) transients (this is likely related to the phase response), to come across yet more spacious and comfortable pads or open-sounding drivers, and for a headphone to be developed that eliminates the natural nulls caused by 90-degree sound incidence so that you can more easily and accurately EQ the directional nulls in a binaural head-tracked HRTF. Simulated anechoic true neutral speakers with head-tracking through headphones is the real deal for accurate stereo imaging bliss.

For me, detail is the pure resolution and accuracy of each individual sound. Having good imaging, instrument separation and soundstage are things that show how good the technical performance of that IEM or headphone is, but I've also noticed that a wide soundstage often reduces the impact of the midbass and it sometimes swallows some of the details of certain instruments when you get the feeling that they are more far away from your ears.

I have bought the KZ ZS10 PRO IEMs and it was so good when i first heard it. The clearness of the IEMs is really great, I never heard anything like that before and i hear things in the songs i never heard like the detail in the sound is awesome. I say you try them out and if they arent good for ya you can always return them if you want. That is all from me.

in medicine there is this idea of an almost "double" placebo effect. say for example you just got prescribed an anti depressant with some less than pleasant side effects. a person may not notice an improvement with their depression, but they will say the medicine is effective because they definately notice the mentioned negative side effects. even if people highlighted what detail means to them (let's say space between voices) and did not notice it in a recording but did notice more decay on a cymbal hit they may very well still say that headphone or IEM is more detailed because of it even if it doesn't fit their idea of what detail should be. I'm super interested to see what measures are taken to overcome stuff like this should the question of what detail is gets seriously explored. thanks for the video l.

As much as I love my Hifiman Edition XS for detail. I feel the isolation and reproduction that my Moondrop Variations give, give it the edge over the Edition XS. Isolation plays a big part in hearing the small micro nuances in my opinion

Interesting point about details, kinda reminded about the time I got into arguments online about the definitions of details (and its subset like macrodetails, microdetails, etc.). I personally define details as "the percentage of information that passes from the source to the listener". Of course, certain systems might exaggerate some information, allowing you to have more "information" than the source material, similar to how frame interpolation or image upscaling is done to video contents. I view other things like room effect, timbre, imaging, separation, etc. to be separate technical aspects from details. Hence, my preferred nomenclature of "resolution" instead of "details", as I strongly associate it to resolution in video.

To me detail is being able to pin point and hear every instrument or sound aspect of what you’re listening to. Like looking at a pinging and seeing what strokes where used where to give it dept. what colors where used in specific spot to create the whole. The DETAILS! Of the painting

In my mind, detail is being able to reproduce all of the fine details in a song or audio source. Can you hear fingers moving up and down guitar strings? Can you hear the twang of bass guitar strings? Detail is the reproduction of all of the minute sounds in an audio track/source. Separation is being able to hear all of the instruments at once and in their own defined space, at the same time. Soundstage is how far away an audio source appears to you or if you can tell how large the recording area is. Does a live song sound like you're at a concert? Does your enemy sound like they're off in the distance, down the hallway or close to you. Imaging is where that audio source is in directionality. Can you tell that footsteps are coming from behind you or to the sides? Is your enemy on the floor above you? Which direction did that gunshot appear to be from. I don't think these concepts can be quantified but they can be defined and understood.

*To provide or to get complete details in audio is all comes to the audio data extractor like a digital music player or a CD player, I've heard Nakamich CD changer at music retail stores during early 2000s with Nakamichi headphones and other very cheap headphones and the detail was used to be breath taking, so all come down to the audio player how efficiently it extracts audio.*

In my personal experience, "detail" (or lack thereof) is a combination of transient response (fast or sluggish) and frequency response. If the attack / decay and FR somehow land in the beholder's "golden" zone then that piece of gear seems to come across as more resolving.

When I think detail I think a combination of good high frequency reproduction, soundstage, and separation. High frequency reproduction in particular I suspect is key, and something IEMs will naturally do better at simply because their drivers are physically smaller. E.g. reproducing all the high-frequency parts of the percussion and how high-frequency transients interact with the recording environment.

I like this video format! I agree with side salad audios thoughts on the matter

Hi; I know I'm late to the party for my opinion but I find it easier to define the opposite of detail and going from there. So the way you would define the loss of detail is when you can't hear elements of the music which the producers originally intended to be heard. So 'detail' could be making the resolution of your headphone/iem better so your drivers are more capable of producing the intended sound. Or it could be manipulating the frequency curve to make certain hard to hear elements more revealing. I.e. boost mids and lowering sub bass in order to hear footsteps better in gaming headphones. Tuning/Eq can 'add' detail if there are aspects of the music that can't be heard properly without it Now there are definitely draw backs to the second method and does often lead to unintended harshness or consequences in other aspects of the tonality but some people may define boosting certain aspects of the sound as the music having more detail in certain places. For me as long as all of the sound can be heard as originally intended then the device has full detail. People may tune it further to enhance certain aspects of the detail but this doesn't 'add' new detail in my definition.

You have a great deal of micro-pistonic-ejection-fractions that peak within any given frequency response. I would say that the display of leading-edge transience, trailing tones, dynamic range and z-axis image seperation of sounds vs quiet spaces in a given frequency response... will be the determinant factor of how well those pistonic peaks will be audible without bluring or distorting. Thus, a driver that can control all said variables will allow a non-distorted or non-blurred presentation of the frequency response being transmitted. Aka. Our ability to hear all of those pistonic peaks are perceived as what we call resolution or detail. G

This feels like David Imel explaining how modern smartphone cameras should be much better than they are, as their processing emphasizes sharpness and definition over sfumato and chiaroscuro, out of a mistaken belief that sharpness and definition are the *only* things that count as "detail". Detail is a balance.

You should make a review on the AKG N5005. Just picked them up, and I'm just blown away. I think it's the most under reviewd IEM, and they are only $200 right now that's down from the original price of $1000. Please make a review. I would love to have your input on these. They come with 4 sound filters, ballanced 2.5 and single ended 3.5 and even a Bluetooth cable! The presentation blew me a way, and the sound is super clean to my ears.

I just bought the original campfire audio andromeda second hand for 400 dollars can’t wait to try them out

I think the detail part comes down to the transients and volume of micro clicks or sounds that are in the soundtrack that are not apparent in some headphones/iems/speakers. For example: Start of slight clanging in Why so serious - Worse equipment shows the clanging at the later louder parts. (Treble detail) Stacey Kent - pianist hums along with his/her improvisation. Worse equipment doesn't present these detail. (Midrange detail) Forgot the song name - Some one knocked over equipment at the very back of the recording room - Not present in worse equipment (Lower midrange detail) Dark eyes - Vibration of the Bass/cello strings at their bassiest notes. - Vibration of strings smoothed out due to slow bass (Bass detail)

Excellent video all my favorite personalities in one compact video discussing a very interesting topic great work DMS!

Hard to answer this because I have 2 headphones and 1 IEM i rotate between regularly and they all bring out different things. My desktop planars reach deeper into the bass and treble and have lower distortion than the others, as well as having the best soundstage and most coherent "wall of sound" effect. Best dynamics too I'd say. The IEMs do imaging the best and are quite fast. My daily portables somehow seem to have the best texture and layering to sounds, it's like you can hear more within a note yet somehow they don't win out on imaging. All that being said, the baseline definition to me of high end audio is when you start hearing the space the instruments were recorded in, or when you start hearing the mixer as almost another band member contributing to the sound. The other aspect that's consistent with high end audio is you'll start hearing notes as waves. You'll start hearing the attack and decay within notes that you didn't know was there. Which of those wins? Vague and personal answer. My brain tells me imaging, speed, and treble clarity contribute most to "detail" so IEMs would win but I'd also say, detail isn't everything. I currently use my IEMs the least.

6:45 Short Answer - it ALL is details!

I think detail means how many sounds at once you can hear clearly before it turns to mush

I’m excited to find out what where this hobby heads in terms of quantifying all the various subjective qualities used by audiophiles thus far. Up till now, just about the only thing we can properly quantify is ‘tonality’ based on the FR and a target curve. Every other terms up till now feels like someone‘s definition of beauty. There may be some commonalities for what beauty is, but there so much subtle variations that everything feels like a wash to me. One more thing, did you guys ever reach out to RTINGS. They’re inventing various correlations between FR measurements with various aspects like sound stage etc. Those just feel crazy to me, but maybe they’re just misunderstood geniuses….

Separation of treble mid and base in three balanced drivers would help in conjuction of sound stage. Open ear headphones work better in a sound isolated room for more sound stage and external sounds isolation.

i think one of the major reasons IEMs seem to pull more detail and offer that unique listening experience... is because of the noise floor they can practically eliminate. with speakers you can turn them up and drown out a fan or the sound of traffic... but you're actually raising the noise by introducing all manner of harmonics and reverberations. if it's detail you're after. it's probably not loud speakers that are going to give it to you... open and closed backs are great - but... you can still hear the dryer or the fan or someone next to you breathing in the case of too many of my cans. there are quiet parts of melody gardot or diana krall where you're supposed to only hear the softest whisper of brushes on a snare. but you can't cause the MF dryer is tumbling while your significant other is on the phone, while the dog is... while the kids are... but IEMs? boy howdy - get those things screwed in your side holes and suddenly, sexily... all you hear is ... fwoomp. that pressure sound of the cargo bay doors closing... you nerds know what i'm talking about... that isolation from the world - that zero noise floor... is why IEMs allow you to see all the way inside your music. because at exceedingly low volumes, you can attenuate the entire song without any one part of it d-bo'ing the other. IMHO - in a dead quiet < 10db environment - headphones and IEMs are equal for absolute detail retrieval. with speakers closely behind but being a whole different beast because outside of head vs inside of head. but as soon as you get above anything audible, IEMs remain king lord queen and jester... because they wrap a black velvet blanket around your music and present it to you like an OLED TV. crispy... with infinitely contrast to the noise floor around you.

The most impressive thing i noticed after getting my 7hz Timeless is the freaking textures on anything, its like i can run my fingernails into a surface and could feel all bass and treble from the vibrations of the grooves. Another difference that i could never feel in any headphones is the feeling that the sound is being generated inside your head and not coming from outside, it like you are inside a room and the music playing around, not that you have one source of some sound coming from each side of your head.

My opinion: Just think of what any IEM, Headphone, Speaker is supposed to do. It's supposed to recreate what was recorded as accurately as possible (in traditional sense). Hence the recording source is another factor but lets ignore that for now. Lets say the recording is supposed to be of an orchestral piece. In a VERY ideal circumstance, if you close your eyes you shouldn't be able to tell if you are actually standing in an orchestra or not, and for that your sense of listening and touch must remain same. The best way to measure all of this would be a HATS recording an actual standardized score of instruments in a standardized room, then recording each instrument individually in the same positions. Normalize the individual instrument recordings as per the main recording and using some spacial mapping in 3d space to be set standard for those instruments from the listeners perspective. Then you can just use the same HATS for all the IEMs/Headphones/Speakers for comparative recordings and measure deviations. The more accurate/detailed the product would be, the less deviation there will be.

being that I am a blind person and everything to me is perceived through audio I would say that detail is contrast. The same details could exist in a music track with a lot of background noise or without background noise but your perception of that detail will increase when you remove the background noise. so detail encompasses everything, clarity, soundstage, imaging, all of the above. What detail is is a collaboration of all of those things contrast so the listener can perceive the music as it was intended to be listened to.

for me, details is I can hear all the instruments like the guitars, drums, piano, the vocal, the void, the silence, the ambience, the serenity, and peace of the music. And for $23 I'm enjoying Tangzu Wener Jade Green IEM right now :D

Detail of how the recoding was done seems like it should be the reference point. If you played and recorded all the instruments you would be familiar with all aspects. From the strings on the guitar, how it was played, what drum heads were used, what microphones, preamps, compression, room, EQ etc. If you were involved with the mixing and mastering you would know the reverbs, panning, space, more compression, all the outboard gear or plugins...you would know all those details. If you listened back to those recordings you should be able to hear all the details, including mistakes and things you would do differently etc. If you had those as your reference tracks , then you would be listening for all the details. If you know well known classic tracks you would want to hear as much as you can from how the piece was recorded, with some or a lot of how it was recorded. Maybe just knowing the songs on lots of different sources would let you know what was there. Then if you can't hear some things on a set of IEMs/phones you've heard on other sources then then it's lacking in detail. That includes everything from instrumentation information, mixing, mastering which includes the space and reverb, room sounds etc. That's what I want when I asked for a detailed and accurate sound. It's interesting how others describe it. I want to hear the details of the recording.

I think IEMs only feel and seemed detailed because they are closer to your ear. However the cans can pump in more energy and that can bring in more detail. It is a bit like asking a question will a smaller canvas show you more detail than a painting on a larger canvas … is a smaller camera sensor with more pixels better in detail than a larger sensor with less pixels. The smaller camera sensor can probably give you detail … but bad in dynamic range … I suppose same for iems. The iems only appear to be more detailed but the cans probably are more detailed … but … it’s all in perceptions end of the day … Even if to photos of different size pack in the same detail, which ones are you more likely to notice. My guess is that the larger print will show you more detail than the smaller one on account of the area. So probably the same logic works for sound as the cans just bring in and show you more in a much wider space. The iems lack space and dimension that the cans can give you.

Very beautiful video! 😃 Just great to look at.

For me detail is being able to listen to a particular sound signature or graphical frequency that is native to manufacture and being able to destingus voice from texture and instrument from voice, the artists equipment to record a piece and finally the hardware limits , if it can handle the most technical of bass and can it handle the extreme clarity of voice without shift in vocal tonality. Can it match the harmonic instruments whilst providing a crisp fast static response. These are some of the things you can understand from a variety of songs/artists. Does the headphone push like the rev limiter on the car going 400kmh or does it struggle to deliver the nostalgia we all get when listening to a new audio device. Ultimately can you drift away in to total abyss without adjusting volume or EQ or even the seating position. Can the audio device take whatever genre and give the best in class whatever the genre. Does it take that genre and perform better than other focused devices set for a specific genre. Is it valorous amongst its predators. Does it take the music experience to a whole nother dimension.

If you ask me, detail is in the frequency response. Specifically, the high end. Boost 8k or so up a little, cut the mids a little from 500 to 6k or so, and you've made the sound "clearer", "crisper", or "sharper". The mids can very easily make a sound muddy; especially when a lot of bass is in the mix.

For me it's granularity of the sound. It can be the definition of the instruments, textures, anything that can be picked out that gives the sound charcter. Similar to details in picture. Is anything being covered or distorted in a way that I can no longer pick it up. An hyperbolic example would be can you tell the difference between a guitar or a piano, or the difference in singers. It's stuff like that because that is detail. Better audio equipment allows you to hear things you couldn't with different audio equipment without messing with the eq. Though that can also bring those things out potentially. It's why people think brighter headphones give more detail. Proximity can also effect this which is probably why this discussion with iem vs headphones vs speakers goes this way.

Details is Textures and Resolution ❤

Dms, what you're saying is a 100% true! I have the focal utopia, and loved it for "Detailretrieval" , its speed, accuracy ...and then came , what i nicknamed "the trio infernale"... : the cayin n8ii/aroma audio jewel/liquid links venom mk1 cable...and destroyed it! More "Detail" than everything else, to my ears , in that combo!!! For me, in that regard, over abyss,hifiman he 1000v2,utopia...un-believable! Soooo....i'm , now , "converted"; i have the hypothesis that the iem- development (yes, pricing also/the "trio infernale"is a 10k!!!) is some sortiert of fester growing than with the big cans, but : I think all the possible Options are not checken yet! Think of why mtb's had 26 tyres...😂 And old sennheiser 'phones of the past already had electrodynamic and conventional drivers, combined...think of the early days of hifi...highly sensitivity-speakers, "Vott"(Voice of the Theater, etc), tubes!! Sometimes, the marketing-strategies overcome the potential Output, ok, almost everytime!? You are developing something brilliant, and then the Marketing and how-to-sell-strategies kick in....i hope that there's still much more to come. And it will. But it takes some pioneer's , like you, for example, who are thinking out-of-box , asking the right questions, giving ideas, New pov's, if you want. Remember also the akg 1000, jecklin float, etc...what happened? It was sent to sleep...😢 Not totally! The 1266, in my opinion, Cremes it's Sound because of lesser pressure/loose fit on the ears...brilliant! So, lets develop new thoughts about our Hobby, combined with old knowledge, experience.. And even better stuff will occur 😊 Without such people like you, medicine and all the other high-end technical genres would't have come so far..and, of course , are still developing (Sokrates😊) Maybe the KI (we call it that in Germany/Artifical Intelligence)will help? But, only combined with human Design,old technical knowledge...and overcoming old "structures" like marketing-focused-break-even-points, etc I'm looking forward to that! Keep up your good work, i'm in on your mission, for sure. Mischa Fuchs,Germany

For me detail in music is the combination of instrumental separation and clarity. If I listen to a recording and one iem/headphone allows me to hear "more" or pick things I could not hear before I would describe that is being more detailed. I also feel there is a subjective side to this regarding the "quality" of individuals hearing. Simply put because of the proximity to the ear drum it "could" be far easier for a lesser trained ear to pick up more detail from an iem than an headphone since sonically the sound wave has much further to travel and more to interact with in a headphone than an iem. Something that makes sense when considering that alot of general consensus is that iems are better until you start hitting hi end headphones

It is interesting that the various dictionaries even have different definitions that are used for "detail" or "detailed." The common thread appears to be that a "detail" is often a part of a whole entity that can be examined more closely or isolated from the whole. So, if we translate that to the audiophile world, everything used to describe the experiences in audio can be considered "detail" or "details," like timbre, clarity, soundstage, etc. So, if one is to try to describe "detail," they are being very vague in their choice of words, since a part of the whole should not be construed as an entity of itself or on it's own! Right?!?!

IEMs are probably percieved as more detailed by alot of people soley because of how much they isolate the environment. Even the smallest of nuances in tracks come out because you are essentially plugging your ears.

The great thing about iems are the fact they are easy to drive, compact and have great sound and isolation and can be fairly comfortable if designed right.

From a physics perspective, sound is just a change in air pressure over time (obviously). So IMO 'detail' means the ability for the IEM/headphone/speaker to recreate this change in air pressure as accurately as possible. This means not just the frequency domain, but also the time domain. If a transient spike lasted exactly 0.0016s during the recording, then it should last exactly 0.0016s during playback. This definition also accounts for the problem of IEMs/headphones/speakers artificially creating 'detail' by adding a slight compressor effect to the sound.

"we re listening to wiggling air" Great

Detail is the speed and accuracy of the drivers response to reach the new 'position' of the phase. it signifies low distortion and great transient response, it also cascades into other forms of details, like stereo seperation, freq response etc.

In my definition, the "details" should be understood as the data that we're getting. Like we're getting more informations/data from a track in this case. Like Salad said, the budget IEMS will outperfom budget headphones, but the higher priced headphones will be better. I personally prefer headphones, when gaming they're less fatiguing for me. I use a Fiio FH5 as my main IEM, but it is not comfortable for long periods than my HD660S or DT770.

depends on the drivers

Yes, "detail" can be argued to nest all other audio terms. But we can easily separate it. Just imagine detail as all the information you manage to NOT LOSE when observing a 2D painting. So now we manage to separate "spatial detail" from "detail". We can separate "detail" even further by considering any detail that is often purposely changed for "flavor" as a separate group. So now it's easier. Detail: If you can hear 10 instruments playing on IEM A but only 9 instruments on IEM B, then IEM A has better details. If IEM A produces all the harmonic details while IEM B does not, then it has better detail. Flavor: If both IEMs are capable of producing all harmonic overtones, but IEM B exaggerates (vice versa) parts of the presentation to change the overall tonal balance and how you perceive it, IEM B does not lack details even if it does not present the frequencies in a normal way, thus we can classify it as flavor. Spatial Detail: If you observe 10 instruments on both, but they sound far apart in IEM B, then IEM B has better separation (apply same logic to imaging, layering, soundstaging). So, when finding what is "missing", we can put all those terms under "detail". BUT, when it comes to "spatial" information that's missing or not, we group it outside of "detail" and put those terms in "spatial details". And last, when all information are present, but tonal presentation is changed via frequency manipulation, we can separate that from "detail" and put them in the "flavoring" group. So for example, if a note is shortened in IEM A, but you can technically still hear every detail, then it has the same detail as IEM B, but IEM A just has a different presentation (flavor). On the other hand, if a note is sharpened and smoothed out, so it pops out but you can't hear the fine details in the voice, then it is "missing information" and thus less detailed. (Note: You can say this is flavoring as well, but you must also include it in "detail". As a result, it must always be in the "detail" group, but it may or may not be in the "flavor" group.) In this way, we can easily separate the audio terms so they don't all nest under one umbrella.

I think detail maps closely to what might be considered "fineness".

In ears do resolve detail more easily. Overall I would agree with the view that in ears in general resolve better but the very best over ear can resolve more than an average in ear. What Zeos points out here is correct, the chain of higher to lesser detail resolution goes from in ear - over ears - speakers. I have had electrostatic in ears with a high-end dac and the resolution was insane (over ears could not get anywhere near it). But if you want space an imaging over ears are better. There is a difference between the two, and it never quite disappears.

I thought it was like the resolution. When I got the Edition XS I realized that now I could make out what instrument was being used in certain songs, like, if it was a bass, a tuba or a violoncello, when all of them previously sounded just like a low hum (to say something). I didn't even thought what the low notes were played with, a lot of times I thought they were synths, but now I knew there were actual instruments. So I thought it was like this but for everything. In the same way, when playing videogames with music from another app, now it was much more clearer than without the EXS, it sounded like there was more separation between the sounds of the game and the music, like if they came from different speakers (and nothing could sound like noise anymore).

Just recently I had been wondering this. In fact, what I am thinking about is if I want to improve my system, what is better going for a high quality IEM or a headphones? The IEM are usually less amplification dependents, are more portables and sometimes cheaper than equivalent headphones. My concern is a about the soundstage size. This is something I take in count with the earphones because never are as the speakers but I like be as nearer as possible. And answering the question about the what "detailed" means. And I think that talking about detail could confuse us. I think is better to talk about how "revealing" are the earphones. How they are able to represent the music with all the different details, nuances, space, imaging that we could find in a good speakers system. I personally want to check some good IEM and headphones to compare with the system I have now, to discover which is more convenient for me.

I think what’s more detailed is car audio. Over 30 years ago the mid 90s I remember listening to some neighbors friends cars into car audio almost shattering house windows and the tweeters once your inside sitting in the car like oh man this is different. Going back in time I think for me that changed my direction how I see music now 30 years later listening to you DMS Zeos Headphone show and other KZfaqrs including Flossy Carter. To me IEMS are absolutely amazing and headphones over the ears do leak sound. So anything that encapsulates your hearing with well tuned speaker like Zeos says in his home will overpower your hearing. This year I was at Coachella parking lot and the sound reaching me there like maaaan that bass jaw dropping and so to me it’s about the power each speaker has so in an IEM if each of theirs pieces inside are tuned so well all in combination will bring out so much soundscape so much thunderous bass so much treble and midrange

A few years ago I was into IEMs and got a bunch of cheap KZ, CCA, Moondrop, 7HZ IEMs but later really hated the feeling of putting something in my ears. Just out of curiosity I gave them a try the other day and I was shocked. In terms of details, any of them totally destroyed my HD660S and S2. It's not because of volume. IEMs are just clearer. They may have problems in tuning, but they have all the details, even the $20 ones.

Really enjoyed this video on a Sunday morning. This was a fantastic topic that deserves more consideration; "what is detail?" For me I really look for the decay/space within the music and tend to find that closed back headphones provide this most consistently but good IEMs do offer great dynamic agility and precision. Overall I probably spend 70% of my time listening to speakers, 20% to headphones and 10% to IEMs but this is driven a lot by convenience and location...

I moved to IEMs as the sound felt more cohesive to me. It was easier to find IEMs that I enjoyed and at a lower price, whereas all my headphones have glaring flaws, so its hard to say if I just haven't found a headphone I love.

To me, detail is a combination of things. Generally speaking, detail to me is how easy it is to understand the information of the music. That means that separation, treble, sound stage and other factors all contribute to a detailed headphone. The most detailed head- or earphone therefore to me is neutral or has a mild v shape with no mid bass bleed or excessive treble roll-off. And it has to have good imaging.

I believe the reason why everyone has a different understanding of detail has to do with our perception of what they hear. We all hear things differently and have sensitivities to different frequencies over a specific period of time (age). Our brains perceive what we hear differently too. On top of that, different audio equipment and their matching to one another, and to our ears complicates things. Therefore, some people can discern more details (and different levels of details) than others. Audio equipment makers therefore produce various equipment to cater to these wide spectrum of different types of people and their respective preferences. Therefore, there is no absolute (objective) definition of detail as far as people are concerned.

For me, even though I'm very loosely an audiophile, regarding sheer experience, but I define detail as very minute things, that all come together and make a headphone or earphone a joy to listen to. These are the following, but my definition isn't limited to: -clarity of instruments/sounds, granularity -reverberation of the "room" where the recording was taken, decay, that sort of stuff -a sort of sharpness, tbh I don't know how to define that, maybe the "speed" of the driver itself? And the very big part, which to me is peak detail, which quite funnily enough, I have in my daily driver Technics RP-F400-s (open back headphone) is I can crank up the volume, like up high, and no sound gets in the way of others, and it doesn't become jarring. There isn't a part which overpowers anything. Tho this could just be part of the frequency response.

I have all the options available to me, I use an IEM for video/sound editing, headphones for gaming, TWL when I move around the room and speakers for relax, all plugged into my lqptop and switch between them using hotkey software

Detail, soundstaging, imaging, air, space etc is all to do with resolving power, so perhaps substitute the word detail with resolution?