Philips Electret N6325 and "Domino" DIN output - Page 2

Site 1: That's 1/4" female to domino DIN male, i.e. wrong direction.
Site 2: The same except for 1/8" female.

Try this search instead:
http://www.google.de/search?q=w%C3%B...utf-8&oe=utf-8

My Philipses are finally here, and I must say, for such a brutal-looking headphone, they have some very surprising talents. Out of the box they have a typical '70s/'80s humped-midrange type response curve, but crank up the treble and bass to compensate and they really rock. Best bass I've heard from an electret 'phone. Some of the best bass I've heard from any headphone. The Philips' diaphragm is actually properly damped. Who'da thunk it?

The treble is good, but there's a resonant peak around 2KHz that sometimes gets in the way of a very good time. A notch filter would eliminate this little flaw.

Proper EQ for these 'phones is supplied easily by the loudness switch of an old Sony TA-5650 VFET integrated amplifier. The really astounding trick the Philipses do, however, is to take very high amounts of bass EQ and continue to put out clean bass. This is flat-out amazing-- keep in mind these are electret phones! There's no dynamic driver inside to help out with the bass as with the beloved AKG K340s. The damping, however it's done (I haven't pulled the drivers apart yet), is the secret. The downside is that the 'phones are basically closed-back. There is a vent somewhere, but directly behind the diaphragm is solid plastic.

One interesting feature of note is the diaphragm-- you can't see it. It's hidden by what seems to be a phase plug, so that when you look into the middle of the earpad, all you see is a disc of solid plastic instead of a hole inside of which you'd normally see a silver or gold-colored diaphragm. Wild.

For roughly $15, the Philips takes its place in my collection as the strangest and as one of the best-sounding (once it's EQed), as well as one of the cheapest. That's what obscurity gets you.

Oh yes-- they're not the most comfortable. They stink, in fact. They're as heavy as they look, and they were designed by people whose ears are perfectly parallel to one another. Normal human ears stick out at a greater or lesser angle from the skull. How Philips could overlook this detail escapes me.

Photos on request.

Then they won't be quite as surprising to you as they were to me. Tell you why. Old audio nuts had to suffer through years and years of mediocre headphone designs, and several manufacturers sold us half-baked electret 'phones. They all sounded pretty much alike right out of the box, humped response curve, all midrange with rolled-off treble and bass. When you tried to crank up the sagging ends of the audio spectrum, you'd most often find that the bass would break up and splatter or be so flabby that the sound would drown in bass soup, with no real bass at all. And this was supposed to be electrostatic sound, albeit slightly on the cheap. It was awful, I tells ya.

The Philipses are something else again. They don't sound like much without EQ, and even with it they're not quite as smooth and liquid sounding as a modern Stax driven from a direct-drive amp, but they're closer than you have any right to expect, given the history, and they can be driven from a normal headphone jack. And they were cheap. You can't beat that. So get that DIN dongle and try 'em and let us know how they sound.

VENT UPDATE: I did find the vent on the back of the earcup: it's a very thin circular slit around the "hi fi" logo, similar to the slit-- practically invisible-- through which the sound emerges on the inside of the earcup. Very unusual. At first glance the phones look like they're solid plastic with no apertures to let out the sound! I'd like to see a socalled white paper on the design of this headphone.

I've been trying to find some info on these for a while as I have bought a pair and think they have great potential, but unfortunately every time I move my head they make a crackling noise, and if I adjust them on my head it's louder, and the sound goes for a second then fades back in.  Does anyone know what might be causing this, and is it easy to solve?  I don't want to take a pair of electrets apart without getting a bit of advice first.

 

At first I thought it was the padding material and a pressure effect as it makes the same noise when they are not plugged in, but with the sound dying when they are on it must be the diaphragm, and I guess it makes the noise when it as off as well as it's permanently charged.  Any advice much appreciated thanks!

I've determined  also that this is caused by the earpads themselves creating a suction effect and doing something to the diaphragm when they are perfectly fitting. Although the effect with mine isn't so much a crackling as it is a mild"breaking a suction/sticky sounding earpads thing" sound. Is this the same ? I find if I keep my head perfectly still and then push in and out on the outside of the cups against my head, when the seal creates a suction the sound will go faint then it will fade back in. ( but I guess you just said that...)

 These are not typical electret drivers, they're single sided magnets ( single-ended ) only as Waulta and I discovered  again recently, so perhaps this is why it is prone to this from it bottoming out or maybe a dust shield flapping about but the sound issue is making me think it's not simply a dustcover.

 I am also wondering perhaps they DID know about it and that's the reason there was no swivel on the cups... so that they did fit just slightly off enough to prevent this, but that seems counter-intuitive to developing a decent design from the very start. There does exist a model # N6326 as well, maybe they fixed the flaw? I almost had one the other day, if I do run into a cheap one I'll test it out to see if it had been addressed in that later model.

These are amazing cans, and i'd like to figure out either an earpad mod or a different pad that doesn't cause this issue.

 

 

Edited by nick n - 12/17/11 at 1:34am

Found another post confirming this effect more or less but it's speaking about the full stats, either way...Guess this post is only peaking to the 4 or 5 people that actually own this, and the 1 or 2 with this issue. Consider it a bump for an interesting somewhat portable electret. I've used mine portable anyhow.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/223263/the-stax-thread-new/8115#post_4736765

This particular fart could be considered a bit more lengthly.

Edited by nick n - 1/15/12 at 3:18am

I had one N6325, with a bit of gain it wakes up. 

 

For some reason I could live with its stock sound but I could not keep it as a regular headphone. Its sound signature was not my thing. Joe Presto now has the Philips.

Thanks for the heads up PM Nick.  I thought it was a problem with mine and would have taken them apart so good to know!  I wonder if a 1/4 inch foam pad would get rid of the problem, if i had some to hand i would try it out.