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Today's Featured Head-Fi Blog: A Japanese headfier's monologue (Sasaki)
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I am a fan of the DT250-250. It has a smooth response, low profile, and wonderful fun bass. It surprised me when a fellow head-phile was selling his due to insufficient bass. Was the variability in perception, or in the headphones? I had to find out, so I bought them from him. Innitial listen told me that it was the phones. I exercised them with some test tones, but no change. Bring in Mr. microphone. First plot is my old set (right and left, right has lower bass level):
Second plot is the new set (again, right has lower bass level):
Notice the problem? They about made me crosseyed (crosseared?) after a short while. After a lot of exploratory testing I figured out the cause. I also understand them well enough to start adjusting the response. After some tweaking, I get:
Not perfect yet, but I got tired of working on them. The moral of the story is be careful, there may be variations among headphones of the same model out there. The other moral is that testing can be useful for more than just comparing two headphones.
btw, this was an actual mechanical mod of the headphones. No equalization was done for any of these measurements.
I forgot to mention why I am so fond of the DT250-250 (if they are working right). Here is a comparison with the Sen HD600. Yellow is the average R+L for the Sens. The other color (pink?) is the average for the DT250 that I adjusted.
Not a bad likeness. This does not tell the whole story. I think that the Beyers have a bit more reverb in the bass, which lends even more heft and impact to the bottom octaves. Overall they are less refined, but the balance is similar, except the Beyers have a higher level in the upper treble.
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I too would like to know the nature of these mods. I settled on the DT250-250 long ago, and wonder if I'm experiencing their full potential.
Dang, I sort of put myself in a corner here. The mod is simple enough, but it involves removing material, and would not be easy to reverse. Worse yet, you can overshoot and end up with DT770 style headhammers, or highly imbalanced L vs R. I haven't fessed up what to cut on because I haven't figured out how to do it properly without a mic and a lot of care. Let me check my notes and see where the limit is. If I could define a fixed dimension it would be easier to get consistent results.
Wow, I'm sorry I missed this thread earlier! Great information. I'm somewhat dismayed that I sold my old pair of DT250-250s... have been thinking about re-buying another pair. Any idea if the new (inferior) frequency response is a design decision by Beyer? Or was this just a pair of headphones from a bad batch?
Are the DT250 still in production? Did your pair lack bass?
The issue seems to be one of manufacturing tolerance. I should send a note to Beyer, shouldn't I? To tell you the truth, once I got them behaving I sort of forgot about it, until today.
My hypothesis would just be manufacturing variation. And IMO phones that don't get their L/R channels well matched consistently (look at some headroom graphs) also tend to vary across pairs (which makes sense if you think about it). IMO these variations within the same models are probably both measurable and audible on orders of magnitude greater than variation of different models of aftermarket cables. Yet most people won't notice either way. The latest x60,440 models of Beyers exhibit amazing L/R matching to the point that I just wonder if Headroom did something different with measurements or smoothing.
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There is no common sense, only uncommon nonsense.
Are the DT250 still in production? Did your pair lack bass?
No, my old pair was perfect. I concur with your feelings that they're well-balanced and close to the HD650 sound, just a bit more lively. I regret selling them.
The issue seems to be one of manufacturing tolerance. I should send a note to Beyer, shouldn't I?
That seems like a huge variation, almost too large to be one of manufacturing tolerance. One wonders if there was a design change. But yes, definitely, it would be interesting to send a note to Beyer asking about this.
That seems like a huge variation, almost too large to be one of manufacturing tolerance.
The 250-80 shown on headroom also have huge variation ... Beyer needs to better match its drivers. Surprisingly the 'driver matched' 650 sample there also have wider L-R gap than that of 595.
Interesting phones and charts ... how different is 250-80 to 250-250 ? Headroom rate the 80 half star higher than 250 with no reason, and I would really appreciate info from you dt 250 guys. =)
GerG, how did you measure your phones ? Did you use head dummies and put the mic inside ? Was that with sweep or white / pink noise ? Thanks.
DT250-250 vs DT250-250
Linear Mode
