The complete guide to ohms, sensitivity and how they affect your listening experience.
Impedance is one of those specs that shows up on every headphone page but rarely gets explained properly. Here's what it actually means and why it should influence what gear you buy.
Impedance (measured in ohms, Ω) is the total opposition a headphone presents to the flow of alternating current from your audio source. It's not just resistance — it includes reactive components that vary with frequency. For practical purposes: higher impedance means your source needs to deliver more voltage to drive the headphones to adequate volume.
Most consumer headphones and IEMs are low impedance (8–50Ω) — designed to work well from phones and laptops. Professional and audiophile headphones are often high impedance (150–600Ω) — designed to be driven by dedicated equipment with proper output impedance matching.
Your source has an output impedance too. A phone's headphone jack might have 1–3Ω output impedance — fine. But some laptops and cheap dongles have 10Ω or higher, which causes frequency response changes on low-impedance IEMs. The Damping Factor rule: your source's output impedance should be at least 8x lower than your headphone's impedance.
A $9 USB-C dongle with high output impedance can make a $500 IEM sound worse than expected.
You need to look at both specs together. A 300Ω headphone with 103dB sensitivity (like the HD 650) is actually easier to drive than a 16Ω headphone with 85dB sensitivity (some planar IEMs). The combination determines how much power you need — and whether your source can deliver it cleanly.
Before buying any headphone above $100, check the impedance and sensitivity. Then check if your current source can drive it properly. Our analyzer does this automatically — enter your headphones and connection and we'll tell you exactly how much performance you're getting from your current chain.
Everything in this guide affects your score. Enter your setup and see exactly where you're losing quality — and what to fix first.
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