Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 1422

There has to be something psychoacoustic going on when the better sound is slowly emergent. While the WOW sound fades rapidly.

I quite like it when a headphone just "gets out of the way" and plays music. When a particular aspect of it's performance (or lack of performance) doesn't call attention to the headphone itself. I find tuning Orthos can be an exercise in finding that point for a particular headphone.    

I'd argue against this, actually. If a headphone you have is radically different from what you're used to hearing, it can take days for your hearing to adjust to them, in my experience.

Edited by takato14 - 3/19/13 at 3:44pm

I still maintain it is a psychological acoustic phenomena. I believe how long it takes to assimilate a new headphone is largely determined by how your hearing has been trained.

Had to go back and dredge this up. Just got the YH3 and a T20RP delivered today (evil minions to the rescue). I would not have believed that an ortho would come stock that bass loaded. It reminds me of old 70's integrateds with a "loudness" switch:)  All details are there across the frequency range but the colouration of the low freq's in complex music is reminiscent of one of those gore films where the blood slowly drips over the camera lens. Before to long everyhing takes on the low freq colouration. That wierd little dip comes at you from nowhere as well if your not expecting it. It is that which made me look this post up again. Once again thanks for posting this.

 Initial impression is that here is a set of drivers just aching for an open enclosure.

 

The T20's on the other hand are unveiled throughout the frequency range, easy to see how they came to be so prevalent in the studio. Vocals really emerge here and detail is quite impressive. Popped out the E11 for a quickie and was really impressed by the combo. The high gain setting causes highs to stab and pushed marginal vocals into sibilance, but the lowgain is quite a treat. Just for fun I would highly recommend anyone playing with orthos to check out RPGWIZARD's dolby headphone treatment for Foobar.  It's a quick way to have a feel for how orthos sound with a large soundstage.

 

Both headphones share one feature. Incredibly poorly designed pads. I'd have to give 99.99 per cent of all non in ear phones a B grade at best on pads but these are stellar in their inability to do the job they were intended for.

 

Pads are sort of a pet peeve of mine:)

Incredible looking T50rp mod

They are smoking cool. Love the leather work. I have some Highland Embossed leather belts I was thinking of tuning into headbands. Thick as all get out but beautiful in black. I also ran across some square wood bowls some time ago that I snapped up for some as yet unknown project.... now I'm thinking...

 

 So much neat stuff in here, a guy could get lost:)

 

Just got this monster back from Don.  I would like to give thanks to dBel84 for the mods he made to my RP-18.  I did not know what these phones were really capable of.  In stock form the 18 was overall a very good phone.  But now after Don did the mods, the 18 went from been good to excellent.  My initial impression is this phone does it all. 

 

The best feature it has is that is very airy sounding with very clear mids and highs.  Low extend to better than LCD-2 levels.  The 18 now reminds me of the LCD-2.2 that I use to own.  But with way better soundstage.  Most of my other orthos have a sense that your sitting in the front to middle row of a concert, the modded 18 are the first that makes me feel been almost there with the artist.  Or rather very close to the artist.  Specially in live concerts recordings. 

 

Mods include pads from Hifiman and cables are Black Dragon 4pinXLR. 

 

Thank you Don for your time and effort.

Good god I am SO jealous. 

You are most welcome G , glad you like the results. I could happily live with these too, they are first class. A clear reminder that technology back in the 70's was well ahead o it's time and is only now beginning to catch up

..dB

I have some RP18's too. Definitely better than any Audeze out there.

Great job Don, I'm sure the RP18 sounds as wonderful as it looks.

 

Just want to mention that I bought a Fostex T10 awhile back, had been wanting one ever since reading tyre's favorable remarks years ago. It sounds as good as I had imagined, in fact I decided to leave it stock. Maybe in another 5 or however many years I'll chance upon a T50v1.

 

As a late observation, these too would benefit from convolution to fix the channel imbalance. Or even careful by-hand stereo EQ if convolution is unavailable. Would improve imaging and soundstaging.

 

I keep hammering this point in since I get a sonic revelation every time I load up a channel balance IR into the convolver while music is playing.

Ok. What convolution software are you using. I am looking through the Foob registry and see one from 06, that does not fill me with confidence.

If it's Convolver 0.3 then it's what I'm using. Works with my foobar 1.1.1, but no idea if newer versions support it.

 

More important, though, than the software, is the impulse response you feed in. Meaning, you'll want to start with getting an electret capsule microphone for a few bucks and attaching it to some sort of a round disc so you can get a seal on the phones. Then measure the channel balance. (Yes, I've experimented with this - you don't need an accurate response measurement to fix the channel balance, you're only interested in the relative difference between the channels. As long as you measure them identically, you ought to be fine without a fancy calibrated microphone.)

Edited by vid - 3/24/13 at 6:00am