SPICE Simulation of Headphones and Earphones

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.