its probably more tricky than loudspeakers, but perhaps some have tried? i'm not really talking about putting wood cups on other phones or new cables etc...

It's relatively simple to make an electrostatic headphone, but modern-style dynamic headphone drivers are right on the limit of what is doable for a DIYer.

Quote:



why?

Dynamic drivers are pretty hard to DIY while you can make an electrostatic driver out of some wire, plastic film, glue and a pencil. This will sound ok but if you want it to be great it's a lot harder to do.

A fella named Joe Grado made some nice ones. Then he showed his nephew how to also.

....I'm sorry; that's not really what the thread was about.

I suspect that to do a really good job, that some pretty specialized equipment would be required. Not so much for the headbands and cups, but for making and winding and tuning raw drivers.

And ear pads...yuck! That's a whole story in itself!

i assume then that its difficult to obtain wholesale drivers for headphones. i have built loudspeakers and crossovers before, but then the driver market is full of product... i didn't need to wind my own drivers!
I guess my other option is to use decent drivers from cheap mass phones like sony v6, and do the rest completely myself. thats my wholesale product i guess! I'll probably end up building a monstrosity, but hey, its all fun.

How far do you take DIY? Building dynamic drivers is nigh impossible for a single person (FWIW, Grado does NOT make any of its own drivers) but I often thought it would be cool to get like a 2" or 3" full ranger and build a K1000 type design .

A 2" or 3" fullrange driver used for speakers works great as headphone drivers. They are typically 8 ohms, and have amazing bass. I don't think any commercial headphone can compete against the bass and transient attack of the fullrange drivers, like Aura Whispers 2" or 3" or the HiVi 3", or the new Jordan 2". They don't need any crossovers, just a well-designed headphone enclosure. But for a K1000-type design, you would need a capacitor for baffle step compensation. Needless to say, they will be heavier and perhaps less comfy than the commercial offerings. They are worth it, since they can sound amazing and put commercial offerings to shame sound-wise.

An alternative is to buy the new Denon drivers from Fostex, and make a nice enclosure for it. The D2000 enclosure cuts off the top-end treble sparkle by using double layers of grill. Still, it is my favorite headphone now.

Quote:



Amazing bass being loads of it. A large fullrange speaker drive on its own, used in a headphoen enclosure is ultimately poor for sound quality. My best results so far have been a K340 type design principle. PX100 drivers with the larger speaker drivers behind them. I put a 120ohm resistor in series with the speaker driver and the resultant sound was must better than simply running the speaker drivers alone.

I havent done any work on them for ages now though.

Quote:



if this was true, why wouldn't headphone companies make cans like this?

i imagine that putting a fullrange driver right up to your ear would result in a really really unbalanced fr.

one reason i have enjoyed doing some custom construction in loudspeakers is you can go 'high end' for peanuts (but a lot of work). i still remember the day when i realised that the high end speakers i had lusted over and researched (worth 10k and up) had drivers i could get hold of wholesale for 100 bucks each. then i realised they had also saved money on their crossovers by using 10c capacitors instead of 3 dollar ones....etc etc. then comes the encloseres....etc etc...i have no prob with this - its just the reality of industry....then the customising i can put into the synergy of components.

however, i am always open and willing to invest into high end prefab product if the stars are aligned correctly...

I'm fascinated by the idea of building heaphones from scratch for the simple reason that I just can't find headphones that sound any good to me regardless of price, and I'd like to be able to tweak to my heart's content. I've listened to headphones that get rave reviews and I can't help but think there's an element of 'Emperor's New Clothes' going on. By far the best headphones I have ever heard were a pair I bought to use as 'donor' shells to re-house some Sennheiser drive units from a pair that had fallen apart, having vainly auditioned many, many expensive pairs in shops as replacements. I never cannibalised them because the Philips SBCHP840 (£35) were/are stupendous, but I know they're going to fall apart one day. The more expensive Philips replacements I've heard are unbelievably bad. What will I do?

DIY electrostatics are a nice idea, but a bit 'Blue Peter' in their construction. Can they really sound any good?

If not actually building the drive units, I like the idea of using full range drivers that someone mentioned earlier.

Would it be possible to augment DIY drive units with some sort of DSP-based filter to perfectly compensate for imperfections?

Quote:



It may be true that Grado no longer builds their own drivers, but I swear I read somewhere that they had a winding machine set up in the basement.

....dunno...may just be for R&D work.

setmenu made his own ribbon drivers.

like orthos, but no front magnet, iirc, thus ribbon would be the correct term.