Having made several short-wave crystal sets in my time I have nearly always used the little "deaf aid" very high impedance crystal earpieces as the acoustic transducer. I thought these were very sensitive being able to copy HF AM signals down to around -55dBm to -60dBm. However I recently read somewhere that with the old WW2 DLR5 low impedance headsets one could hear an applied audio signal as low as 2uV (-101dBm), which is remarkably low. So, I began to wonder just what ARE the best headsets to use if one is after the maximum efficiency converting an audio frequency electrical signal into sound pressure in the ear?
This graph (from Wikipedia) shows the sensitivitity of typical humans at different ages. Someone of my age (63) is likely to be less able to hear as low as someone aged 30 years.
As some of these old military surplus headphones can be hard to find nowadays in good condition, I wonder what is the most sensitive headset/earpiece that can be bought new "off the shelf". Any ideas please?
