Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 99

What does the new smaller driver look like?

Could be.

If a 'phone sounds dull, bass-heavy and (as ericj said himself) sloppy, then damping might be the cure.

Has anyone in your forum tried damping them with felt or rock wool or dense foam or dryer lint or...?

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Thanks for the photos.

Yeah, the driver looks just like the "Lvov" TDS-16 driver in Angelic's photos, one of which is below.



Is the H-16's driver 55mm in diameter?

And you say this one is 40 ohms? Very unusual if that's a 55mm PMB/Yamaha style driver.

Although... looking at Angelic's photo... Those aluminum voice coil tracks look flat. Doesn't that look to you like the flat, tensioned, not-pleated diaphragm you'd find in a Yamaha YHD or a Fostex or Audio-Technica or Sawafuji? Yet there's a center electrode, which means the diaphragm's center is clamped. Perhaps in the 40-ohm version the width of the aluminum track is increased? An interesting driver. Is it the same driver, more or less, that's in the H-16?

Back to the H-16: If there's any bass at all, a damping layer will probably won't hurt it as long as there's an airtight seal between driver and baffle-- and damping will very likely make an overall improvement in the sound. That Oreo-cookie-like white foam sandwich should allow for the insertion of plenty of damping layers, should they prove necessary.

These things have excessive bass, you say? I've learned to hear opportunities in that. No guarantees, just opportunities.


If these are selling for the equivalent of $6 each, perhaps we should try to get, say, six of them sent to the US for experimentation. Would that be possible?

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Welcome to our small but mighty band. Well, maybe rhetorically mighty.

That's the best possible outcome, of course, but I'm wondering: what was it that led to your low expectations? Age? Appearance? Cost? My crabby writeups early in this thread?

Cool! I hope you succeed, but you'll need a diaphragm/voice coil. You could try drawing conductive ink on a tensioned circle of Mylar, or you could get another ortho with non-glued magnet sandwich (say, a Fostex T20 of some early vintage) and use that.

Drilling holes in a powerful magnet might present some interesting problems. Let us know how that goes. Take pictures.

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Listen to ericj on this one. What he's presenting is what we've come to call the Stage One mod. This was the original mod, first done about 20 years ago now, that showed that the perception owners had about their Orthodynamics, that they were good and smooth but had poor transient control-- ie, they bounced-- was correct.

Transient response translates to certain features of the frequency response, so we shouldn't be surprised to find that when the transient response is shored up, the frequency response follows suit.

It's the layer of felt right next to the driver that does the primary work of damping the driver. Everything else is reflection control (a dipole driver in a closed earcup? Huh?) and making sure there's enough force holding the damping felt firmly up against the driver. The paper acts to increase the damping a bit, but depending on your tastes, you might find you can leave it out.

Leave the little strips of black felt in place. When you remove the driver they'll try to fall out, but don't let them-- they're vent dampers; they keep some of the bass from leaking away.

It's a simple, cheap mod, and it's entirely reversible.

You may find the top octave is still weak after all this. That's where Stage 1.5 comes in.

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