IEMs? Are we talking just earbuds or full-on custom ear canal casts?

First off, stop buying Razer products, at all, full stop. Razer is a hella sexist misogynist company.

Secondly, Razer is known and only got famous for making high performance gaming mice, particularly their optical sensors and mouse-click switches (yes, I know they had a ball mouse but that’s not what really made them famous/big/successful). Everything else on top of that is literally just branded garbage, ESPECIALLY their shitty headphones.

Headphone clamp pressure really is a thing, and ranges from too low all the way to too high. I wish I could answer all these questions and infodump at you in person, because there’s really a lot to go over on this subject.

So, broadly, there are some big categories of headphones in this context: on-ear vs over-ear, and closed-back vs open-back.

In general, on-ear is cheap crap, just skip that design entirely. It’s bad, cheap, uncomfortable, and inferior. It’s marketed as compact and trendy, but in reality it’s just cheaper to manufacture and has higher margins. I’m sorry Grado and fans. It’s just kind of a weird, outdated design. Instead of the part of the earcups that actually touch you being wider and sitting/touching you actually on your skull AROUND your ear, they sit directly on the ear.

Over-ear, in comparison, doesn’t (shouldn’t) compress the actual ear and just covers your ear.

Then you have the next two: closed or open. This is where shit starts to get a little more complex to fully explain. I’m inclined to start by explaining how sound is vibrations in the air and how the cochlea works and psychoacoustics and all that, but to keep this not monstrously long and overly complex, just know that with speakers, you’re hearing a lot of the actual room, as well as the speaker itself. And so with headphones, you don’t hear a room, since the headphone is basically directly on your ear and is very close to directly transducing air motion into your ear canal.

Except… That there is a room. Or, more precisely, an acoustic space that matters. The shapes of both your ear and your ear canal, the resonances (along with a ton of other stuff) of those spaces and materials all matter! Think about how much you notice something seemingly so small as even your fingertips lightly touching your headphones when they’re on your head - the scale of things that matter has shrunk, and seemingly small differences are QUITE noticeable.

So, for closed-back vs open-back, the physical difference is that, literally, the back of the headphone, behind the cone/driver is either a closed space or open to the room/space that you’re in. It’s very much like if you hold your cupped hand and cover your ear. In both types of headphones, you obviously have a headphone housing and some sort of driver covering your ear, but with open-backed headphones, the opposing side to your ear is open.

Why does this matter? Well, because the headphone driver is essentially acting as an electric pump that’s going back and forth really fucking fast, doing its best to recreate recorded or synthesized sound. It’s transducing (like alchemy) alternating current into air vibrations, and thus sounds. Electric motors do the same thing, but instead of with the goal being air vibrations, the goal is the kinetic motion itself, usually with the purpose of controlled, powerful rotation. Speakers and headphones (and in reverse order, microphones!) are just electric motors.

Sorry, tangent!

Okay, so, now we know what the driver in the headphone is doing. But, now you have to account for getting that air pressure into the ear canal to affect the cochlea so that you can hear it!

And as most of us can intuit, air pressure that relatively small can diffuse quite easily, and does. So the first idea would be to basically run a sealed pipe or tube directly into the ear. But have to ever actually listened to a tube? Of course you have! That’s what brass instruments like trumpets and wind instruments like clarinets are! And then the obvious issue with that is, tubes have a sound all their own, and we don’t want everything to sound like it’s coming through a tube, we want it to sound natural, like the listener hears natural, unrecorded sound.

IEMs attempt this. If you shove the driver wayyyy into your ear, you attempt to eliminate as many variables as you can. Generally, IEMs for performance also are Isolating, meaning they are designed to isolate the intended signal (the music coming out of them) from whatever sounds are happening in real life, usually an audience and all kinds of noise. And they generally do a great job.

The issue with IEMs, however, are many. Right off the bat, they are relatively expensive because they’re hard to make. The expensive nice ones literally involve somebody CASTING YOUR EAR CANAL. Yes, this is as unpleasant as it sounds, no pun intended. Also, as the IEM name implies: they are monitors and generally not optimal for enjoyment listening. Each time you put them on or take them off, your ear canal is getting clapped and soaked by a very deep plug. Some people like this, but I suppose ymmv.

Also, now that you’ve stuck the driver way in to the side of your head, you’ve bypassed a good part of your ear canal, but the entire external part of your ear. And if you remember, tubes have sound; your own unique ears and ear canals have unique acoustic sounds that you subtly but definitely use to hear space and identify sounds. IEMs do not sound perfectly natural. This isn’t the end of the world, but it is an effect inherent to the design.

Earbuds (the less deep, more consumery - less professionally versions, cheaper, and thus not really IEM (In Ear Monitors)), avoid some of these issues, but have all their own issues… From cost, to wireless security, to lifespans due to unreplaceable batteries, to cost efficiencies because you’re now buying radios and software and support and tiny batteries and durable comfortable plastics that touch the insides of your ears, etc. They’re undeniably convenient, but several times more expensive AND non-durable and basically disposable.

So, what does all of this have to do with open-backed and close-backed headphones, and why did I feel the need to tangent on it, especially when I’m trying to make this not monstrously long?

Yes, I’m doing my best to keep this short? But in order to explain all of this and not make assumptions on what you and whoever reads this might know, certain topics and definitions have to be at least conceptualized.

Open-back headphones generally attempt to bring you both your own ear canal and your own external ear, and do it all in a way that is balanced and robust. Sound reproduction is by no means a solved cluster of technology or principles in much the same way that visual display technologies isn’t.

In sound and physics, there is a principle called the “proximity effect”. It affects speakers, headphones, microphones, and normal real sounds, such as talking. Put very simply, the closer something is, the more bass it has. This has to do with the way energy is diffused, but in-context you can observe it by playing some music on your headphones and them lifting them off of your ears. You will still hear the treble/higher frequencies, but the bass will get quieter more than the treble will get quieter.

Oversimplifying, it’s because the air is leaking out. With speakers, it’s why small speakers generally sound small, and why big speakers sound big. So, for headphones, small drivers need to be close and have a air-sealed space (I’m sorry, I’m accelerating here because I have to wrap this up somehow), or you can create big drivers for headphones and just control for distance to be consistent.

So closed back, you’ll get more bass but it’ll be less accurate and less natural but the headphones will basically require them to be sealed to your head (stickier/wetter feeling earpads and more clamping force) and the drivers will be closer.

And open back will be bigger drivers with more velvet-like earcups.

Generally. None of this is hard rule, but that’s an idea of the concepts and limits.

Some open back headphones (such as the Sennheiser hd-598, which i think is out of production and has been replaced several times over by its successor the hd-599) have such low clamping force that people complain they don’t stay on your head. The 599 isn’t as much like this, but because of the larger earcups (and deeper! For more ear space) and the soft velvety earpads (not pleather coated), it’s a WAY more comfortable experience.

I cannot express how pissed I am at Razer (I’ve preferred their mice since like 2001) for making such shitty headphones and how much they sell them for. You’re being had. Paying more for a worse experience.

If you’re 42, depending on your hobbies, you should save up and invest in a $200-500 pair of open backs, get a dac and an amp and spend like 200-400, and have a much nicer experience while playing games and not have your shit break on you. It’s not a small amount of money and I don’t know your financial or life situation. But going off your games and music you like, I’ve made some inferences and can tell you this is the pricepoint to save up and try to hit for yourself. It’s the happy medium point.

Resources for research are the headphones subreddit (fuck spez), headfi, the now retired Tyll Hertsens (that’s his name) and his gone-website but still existing old videos on YouTube innerfidelity, Zeos from his yt channel and subreddit zreviews (he’s uhh… well… you’ll see). There’s a market of hype and elitism in this hobby/field, be ready. If your budget is actually only ever this exact 200, there’s really only a few great options for you, the sony mdr 7506 is (still) very much a go-to, but not perfect for anybody. It is, however, a robust tried and true actual studio monitor headphones from the 1990s that’s stil in use

I maxed out the length haha. But seeing as we’re several comment levels deep already, i doubt anybody’s going to read this far. If you have any questions now or forever, don’t be afraid to message me or add to this comment chain, and I’ll answer them if i can. I’m curious what you end up going with and why.