Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 446

Well I like T50RP a lot, I managed to mod them to sound very similar to O2 in tonality and overall character out of my amp. They still don't have great soundstage, but not a lot of orthos do. The transient response, speed and low level detail retrieval can be improved, but perception of the soundstage goes to hell if I do that, it becomes this tiny SR-X like walnut head-space and I hate that. My problem with all orthodynamic headphones is soundstage. When you dampen orthos so they sound good and fast, almost stat like, the soundstage suffers and shrinks to this tiny unrealistic space. Only a few orthos managed to sound big even after heavy damping. I still think that orthos are incredibly good at what they do best, combining dynamic headphone bass impact and stat speed and details, if only you can add realistic soundstage to this mix....I would move them on top of the heap.

This is why, sadly, I like any Lambda better than any ortho I heard so far, and forget about O2 and Sigma, they are just incredible in this respect. I tend to use orthos now with a lot of grind-core, metal and etc now, that way I don't notice this as much as when I put on Jazz or something with a lot of spacial cues.

T50RP is on par with YH-1 for me, they sound different but in terms of enjoyment are in the same category. I would rank them close to the top of the ortho game. If I were to rank all of orthos I heard it would look something like this:

1) Yamaha YH-100 (FV modded) - just slightly ahead of all others
2) Yamaha YH-1 (ericj modded) / Fostex T50RP (F2D modded)
3) Yamaha YHD-1 (F2D modded) / Yamaha YHE-50A (modded to stereo by dBel84, damped by dBel84 and F2D)
4) Fostex T20v2 (F2D modded) / Fostex T30 (need to mod, but comfort sucks anyway)
5) Yamaha HP-50S
6) Audio-Technica ATH-1
7) Pro 30
8) ATH-2

Looks very nice. Are they dampened in any way, except for stock damper?

Not without making them impractically large and heavy, these weigh a bit already and then there's the possibility of losing the bass due to bigger ear space.

Nope, stock damper and small reflex dot (which may not be needed for most). The inside of the cups have two discs of thin medium density cashmere felt each, nothing on the driver itself, just to absorb internal housing reflections. I hope to hear another T50RP to see how it affected the soundstage so I can answer this Q. As you know I don't care much about soundstage with phones and with these particular mods it shouldn't have affected how the RP does this unless the old cups were enhancing the effect by reflection and vibration. Otherwise these are essentially like the original with some felt inside but much more rigid and massive.

Those kingwood T50 looks absolutely amazing!
How do they compare to your other orthos? Better in every way, standing there on the top?

I always wanted to ask you, why did you get K1000 if you don't care about soundstage?

Thanks, that kingwood costs a fortune. $50 for about 16" x 4" x 1"

They just cream all my other orthos in all areas, and my Staxes and my K1000 except on open presentation. Of course we all have different sound prefs but for me these are the killer phone I've been dreaming of.

The level of bass is somewhere between the T50v2 and T30, so, big and boisterous in other words and even with the big-ass thick, heavy, dense cups they still rattle a bit when I crank it. They also go incredibly loud very cleanly and can take monstrous poundings from my power amps yet are sensitive enough to use to good levels from my DAP. They isolate much better than stock, are more comfy than stock and sound much better.

Because they sound so good, silly

Agreed. T50RP still has more soundstage than most orthos because it is circumaural and the cups are deeper.

It can get away with this because the driver is still much larger than the small stuff like the ones in the Yamahas and the SFI drivers, even if not as big as the first generation Fostexen. smeggy has proved that, with enough modding, these will be much better than most other orthos.

smeggy, did you make the cups angled on the inside, or are my eyes playing tricks on me? They look very nice, and amazingly quite a bit of it is from the original.

How did you create the cups? I could just see what looks like a small knife on the photos? Truly impressive woodwork, not a flaw in sight.

smeggy..totally awesome!!

Cheers all,
the cups were turned on my little lathe and a sanding disk on a drill. I would have done it all with my Swiss army knife but I probably only have less than 20 years left before I keel over

No angle on the drivers, they're just flat. It uses all the original parts except for the cups, wire and cup swivel joints which I used nuts and bolts for. Aside from that, it's all Fostex.

smeggy , those are the work of a true craftsman ..dB

Is it a fact that the new T50RP uses the same driver as the previous one with crappier pads?
(pads aren't my main worry...)

T50RPv2 (current version) uses pads that seal in the bass, T50RPv1 uses pads that are "bass-porous." The drivers are the same. Not to be confused with T50v2 from the early 80s or T50v1 from the late 70s.