Convention Paper
SPICE Simulation of Headphones and Earphones
AES Convention 127 · Paper 7843 · October 2009
Abstract
Unlike loudspeakers, headphones and earphones are not in the mainstream of electroacoustical design.
In this paper, different designs for headphones and earphones are discussed and
simulated with the
aid of SPICE, the well known electrical circuit simulator. These simulations can be used to perform
elementary design tradeoffs. One significant difficulty is the lack of component measurements in the open literature.
The paper begins with an overview of design aspects of headphones. This is followed by a review of
the use of SPICE as an electroacoustical simulator. The following section detai
ls various experiments
done using SPICE to explore headphone design. The conclusion decries the lack of publicly available
information as well as the dearth of components.
