Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 733

I used cotton ball for makeup removal and fluffed them up a bit. I made sure the cotton balls fill the entire back of the cup, but do not interfere with rubber driver decoupling thingies.

Any idea of the number you used? I can estimate how much dampening that is if I know the count. Thanks.

I believe I used two large balls per cup.

teehee

Too funny Kabeer!

This cup is too small. Need moar bigger cup

Thats cuz thats the face mask kabeer wore for halloween, jeez.

Well, after a few days break from the YH3s and YH100s, I put the YH3s back on the desk for more dampening adjustments. The ESW9 pads were really bothering me as they just didn't produce the bass I expected them too and I only had one theory why. So I made a ring about 1/4" wide to surround the driver opening on the front bezel, then stretched the ESW9 pads over that:




I had changed the dampening too and they were too under damped, so I added the disc of the synthetic, breathable felt to the drivers. Close but still underdamped. But great, deep bass! Pads were just friction fit at that point so I opened them up again and swapped in the Moorbrook felt. I stretched the pads over the cups for the pic above then listened. Damn. Too much dampening, but the shrill highs I had last time with the ESW9 pads were gone too. So now I need to swap back to the thin black synthetic felt and decide whether to try the fourth layer of cotton or add a second, smaller disc of the black synthetic felt in the center of the cup behind the driver.

Once I recable and get it dialed in again, I'll make ESW9 pads adapters for my YH3s and use acoustic caulk to attach them to the YH3s. Then I'll add the felt ring to the adapter opening to fill the ESW9 pads. And then I think I'll have the YH3s maxed out.

Which leaves the YH100s to adapt to the dampening of the YH3s.

But the YH100 driver is definitely larger than the YH3's driver:



I'm not sure if I'll take off all the tape or not. Might keep the center disc for now and dampen the vents with cotton batting instead of felt. I'll add the felt ring to the YH100 ESW9 pad adapters too and see how it sounds.

Headphone Addict also posted his thoughts here a "few" pages back, but I believe the units at CanJam were prototypes and there may be changes to them to allow us to open them up and tweak the dampening to our tastes.

Has anyone heard from Audeze of late? Are they going to sell the drivers to us for DIY while they sort out the headbands for their production units?

Yes, these were actually one of the highlights of the meet for me (after the people and social stuff). I really should have written something down earlier, but basically, I felt they were pretty good stock, but had tons of potential. In the prototype form present at Canjam, they sounded a bit underdamped to me, especially in the bass. Bass was a bit loose and overblown, though went surprisingly deep, especially considering the foam earpads on the prototype model. I talked with Fang extensively, and the earpads are going to change still for the final release, though probably just to a nicer material like a velour. From what I heard, these actually manage to get away without a sealing earpad. I felt that the frame was very nice, and while the back in the proto form was fixed in place, I have hopes that they will decide to change this, so that those with the will can modify damping. It wont take much though, the diaphragm in the HE-5 is very thin and light (2u mylar plus the metalization), and the sound was less undamped than my normal bias SR-Lambda was without it's mechanical damping. The driver itself is 4ohm, and has a series resistor in the cable to make it a suitable load for most headphone amplifiers. The stock cable has a 12ohm resistor, though the cable is easily user replaceable, and will be available in a few options, including no resistor. I was a bit surprised that it was as sensitive as it was, considering the voltage divider formed by the series resistor and driver impedance, and Fang told me that the production version will have an increased number of magnets (neodymium), which will increase the sensitivity further.

Did they mention any price range?

In the range of $7-800 for the initial release, and he wanted me to mention that once everything is settled down and streamlined, there will be another one coming out in the $2-300 range. Probably 1-2 years for the second one.