Still solves it.
why did you quote half way? i donât know what you are trying to prove here?
without distortion and clipping is hard tbh specially for 70+ volums.
the high volume part is important, you wont have a distortion free or clip free sound at high volumes and as your iem starts to clip, the system automatically lowers the preamp to lower the volume.
just get a more powerful amp if u need more volume and cant get it currently.
Yep or tip rolling would be my route I donât eqâŚjust like to listen to my 
thatâs all
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what a beautiful recommendation my brother, just tell op to buy a 3 kilogram desktop amp to carry it with himself everywhere he goes just to have upper treble on his portable iem.
tip rolling wonât add upper treble to the orchestra lites tbh since its treble start rolling off at 8k and thats pretty early and dark sounding.
I donât know about that, this is 112 dB/mW, 16 Ohm IEM, so even with preamp at -15dB you could drive it to deafening loudness from basically any kind of source including 1V RMS apple dongle 
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@Rikudou_Goku wasnât advocating getting a new source. Quite the opposite really. All he was saying is that the point of negative preamp is to avoid clipping. If you are clipping with negative preamp you would be clipping without it (and without EQ) on that source anyway and the solution is to that is to use a more powerful source
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why i canât get my sensitive iems to not distort or clip then even with a desktop amp, am i doing something wrong here? i think the there are driver limitations to the eq but im not really sure tbh.
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How loud are you listening to them at? I would elbe surprised if any modern IEM is distorting without EQ before your ears blow out
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oh, i meant with eq they distort at high volumes. without eq most iems have minimal distortion that you canât hear even at 85 db and thats very very loud for me.
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With EQ are you using the appropriate negative preamp gain setting? If so they should be no louder than how you are listening to them without EQ. Also it very much depends on the EQ software. MSB (on Hiby DAPs) is really bad imo. Everything sounds underwater or bloated and kind of distorted. PEQ on the Q5K is very transparent and high quality
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Yes, drivers distortion is a function of the SPL they produce (or rather voltage that is at its terminals) at given frequency (and it is really limiting factor to the clipping, not the power at hand). So the more you push the gain in EQ simultaneously reducing the preamp the higher you get into distortion at EQed frequency.
Take a look at the graph below. You clearly see that the distortion rises with increase of SPL that is produced by the driver. Zero Red has incredibly small THD and should react to EQ very well.
Then there is U12T which has higher distortion along the line.
So in the simplified scenario, if you have perfectly flat FR and you push up very narrow +20dB at frequency 10000Hz, otherwise listening to averaged 74dB after preamp (-20dB) you need to look at distortion for 10000 Hz at 94dB SPL and distortion for all the rest of the band at 74dBA SPL. There are not many manufacturers or reviews measuring distortion though 
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Azla Crystals
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