Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 401

Aiwa damping mascot

So there I was cutting out damping discs for my gazzilionth Aiwa damping scheme, and lo' and behold the ortho damping mascot appeared before me!


Does felt have hallucinogenic properties?

too funny ..dB

heh, don't smoke and mod

FOSTEX*T 50 RP*/*FOSTEX T50RP / FOSTEX T50 RP*/*Íàóøíèêè è ãàðíèòóðû â èíòåðíåò-ìàãàçèíå Doctorhead.Ru / Íàóøíèêè äëÿ äîìà / Ñ ÷àñòè÷íîé øóìîèçîëÿöèåé / FOSTEX T 50 RP

Èíòåðíåò-ìàãàçèí íàóøíèêîâ - Doctorhead.ru - Îáçîðû è òåñòû íàóøíèêîâ, îòçûâû î íàóøíèêàõ. / Ãëàâíàÿ

The reason for the shop to be that great is that they have frequency response plots for many headphones that headrooms has no plots for, plus reviews of multiple headphones or headphone amps compared.
There are ratings by the site as well as user ratings. They even carry Precide!
Would you like to compare FOSTEX T50RP vs. Audio-Technica ATH PRO 700 SV or DT770 or K240 Studio on the paper?
I actually wonder how good the new Fostex T50RP is supposed to sound reading from the graphs. The highs and mids are incredibly smooth and there's a very slight dip at about 35 Hz.
With some proper pads this could really be a great mass-produced ortho headphone for masses. There's no sign of anemic bass or rolled off treble on the graph and their measuring equipment must have been the same and calibrated the same way (although not exactly as headroom's Neumann binaural head) during all those measurements otherwise they'd be nut. Who knows. They have all the expensive stuff together, maybe they aim at the richer population of Moscow, St. Petersburg...

They have a nice picture of the driver

Compared to ATH-AD700 or ATH-A500 the T50RP are a higher class product obviously. They may record the phones on cheap small omni electret condenser Panasonic capsules stuck near the ear canals of a living 'dummy' but still you could have an idea what some headphone's signatures are like...

BTW does anyone have bookmarks to the japanese page with huge lots headphones measured for frequency response (with google translator, you could have a clue what the reviews said, too) ??
BTW2 did the Headphone frequency response plots thread get wiped out in the big blackout?
I can't remember the username but that guy really did a gread favour to many people. I can't find the thread anymore (but haven't looked that closely).

They have lots of nice pictures, like the K272 driver with foam / earpad uncovered, surrounded with the round passive backwave attenuators...
Really a site you'll spend a few hours to discover just a little. I'm not just overly excited, that page is worth it. Maybe I should start a new thread to attract more attention to it.

Are Fostex T5 and T7 orthodynamic? There's no information on their site really. Just regular postings on Sweetwater and Musician's Friend and such sites. I guess they're put RP in the name if those were orthos.

BTW is there any BEYER DT150 owner around?
On my DT100 one driver has blown a year ago (an amp with bad DC bias, I even let it kill two of my phones because the DT100 always had some intermittence so I didn't realize it's a faulty driver). Those were a gift to me so I want to have these working again. I'd hesitate to sell them minus the driver either.

I've found DT150 drivers for sale which are different but they're sold with the flat part of the assembly. If the Flat Part fits DT100 and there's little difference inside, I could buy the DT150 drivers and even have the Beyers upgraded in future. Otherwise I'll put an SFI in but it would be irreversible. Ah wait I'd have no use for the flat part of the earcup assembly so I could butcher it anyway.

In fact I need somebody to pull down the earpads and pull down the foam (held in place by two strips double-sided tape in case of DT100), unscrew the assmbly and take a picture of what's inside? Maybe even just pulling off the foam would be enough for me to judge. It's all easy but you should open them up very gently or you could tear the wires or even damage the connectors.
Maybe I should start a new thread about it...

Anyway I'll post some pictures of the DT100 SFIzation. Not now, a month later maybe? I haven't even tried it yet.
With some thick felt on the back of the cup, some thin felt on the driver and supraaural earpads stuffed inside the circumaural pads (acting as bass lens) those should sound quite tight and balanced with no big bass but perhaps a tight one. Good highs perhaps, too. Closed headphones have recessed mids. On many recordings that just sounds right. The bass probably depends on how tightly the SFI sits inside the flat side of the earcup. Maybe the SFI could be forced so tightly into the assembly it would stay on its place even when you move it closer to your ear (sticking out of the earcup in fact).

I actually found the new pads looking and feeling much more expensive and less cheap than old pads (I assume they were like T20 pads). New pads look to me more like Stax pads, similar texture and material, more leather like. Just for the record I think T20V2 pads look and feel horrible.

It'd be great to have current production orthos that actually sound good and if it's just a matter of earpads and a little tweaking I'll be a happy monkey. I wonder if Fostex would be willing to sell just the earpads and driver capsules.

This may help...

Here is the review: Mini-reviews of Fostex T50RP

The review at the very bottom of the page states that "I have found, however, that they do an extraordinarily good job of representing what one would hear with a subwoofer."

I can assume that this means it has bass to some degree.

The review is dated 8/26/2007.

Aiwa damping Mark II(gazzilion) and Differential Damping Theory

Ook,
So the ortho mascot has been helping me all day to damp these Aiwas. I have been yo-yo-ing around the equilibrium point.

I can in fact get a sound that most would probably find awesome, BUT, being the basshead I am I have tried to get to the point where I have a smooth clear sound AND deepest bass. (Instead of settling for trading off the deepest bass).

I nearly went crazy doing this (as could be seen by my last post erheemm ).But I think I have MOSTLY done it. I'll post where I am before I totally lose the plot lol.

Ok, firstly I think something needs to be mentioned and it's something which will hopefully revolutionize damping for everyone. It's Ludo's (all credit to him, I just continued the Euro Yammy Wings work) theory of 'Differential Damping'.
This theory works by damping the driver strategically based on where it makes most bass and most treble.

Firstly, you will have to perform first stage damping by damping the cup surface and vents.
Now you can use felt against the rear of the driver to tune the sound to your preference balancing it all around the damping equilibrium point.

Take for instance a Yamaha driver, Ludo figured that the driver is pinched in the centre, therefore most bass is produced as you travel to the drivers outer circumference.
And with drivers such as the large Fostexs' this would work in reverse, with bass more in the centre.

So onto the Aiwa. the first stage damping:
Fostex driver > Red felt (from ericj) flush against driver > Thick grey felt (Smeggy's felt) filling the whole cup > fibrefill to fill the grille dome space.

Here are photos (click to enlarge):
Red felt against driver:

Grey Smeggy felt visible from my earlier damping scheme:
.

Now for the differential damping. I wanted to damp it more and retain deepest bass. So I wanted to damp less in the center.
So between the Red felt and Smeggy felt, I added a donut of Moorbrook, thin dense black felt (this is the magic stuff we used to damp a lot of Yamahas).

Here it is:
.

What this had the effect of doing, is damping the upper mids to treble, whilst having not much effect on damping the bass.
Nice, but to me the bass was too wild and loose still. So here is where me and Ludo disagreed (he thinks its unwise to do this), but I shall show you what I did.

If you look closer at the last photo, you will see in the donut hole of Moorbrook, I have put tightly a small disc of Red felt (the tongue of my ortho mascot ), with a small hole (few mm) in that. I called this Progressive Donut damping.
Basically the damping layer gets less dense as you go to the centre. It is not entirely different than what Yamaha employed in the YH-1000 I think.

The hole was to eek a bit of the deepest bass out. technically it should cause lots of backwave problems, and in most of the schemes, yes it does, this scheme just about gets away with it.

Ok that was a long read, hope it helps someone out there in their damping efforts.
I can now say the Aiwa is vv.good. And any tuning from this point will be using the progressive Donut technique. But I dont see much of a need to untill I get the YH-100 for a showdown.



(PS: About that sound that most would find awesome. Just do the same scheme as above, except dont put the small hole in the small Red felt donut piece. OR have no small red piece. And have the Moorbrook be a disc instead of a donut, and put a small hole (2-3mm) in it)