Just listened to some Fostex T50RPs today... WOW! - Page 97

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend the Beyer pads that strongly, since you would essentially have to glue them on.  

I tried the Beyer pads, they are definitely too small to wrap around the T50 cups.

What about putting the T50RP drivers in a Beyer housing?  That would be badass not to mention extremely comfortable.

I was thinking about some double sided tape or something with the Bayer pads..

Are alle Beyer pads the same dimensions? ...

Any alternative VELOUR-pads? 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by joelpearce 

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend the Beyer pads that strongly, since you would essentially have to glue them on.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mad Max 

What about putting the T50RP drivers in a Beyer housing?  That would be badass not to mention extremely comfortable.

Interesting... though the Yamaha ortho drivers might be much better candidates since they're round.  It would probably take a lot of wrestling to get the Fostex drivers in there, and it would greatly increase the expense of the headphones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardilla 

I was thinking about some double sided tape or something with the Bayer pads..

 

Are alle Beyer pads the same dimensions? ...

 

Any alternative VELOUR-pads? 

 

Since the AKG pads fit, I imagine their velours would also fit.  Aren't there some that can be used for the 240/340?

Quote:

Originally Posted by joelpearce 

Interesting... though the Yamaha ortho drivers might be much better candidates since they're round.  It would probably take a lot of wrestling to get the Fostex drivers in there, and it would greatly increase the expense of the headphones.

Headphile sticks Grados into Beyer housings, not only are they round, but much smaller.  T50RP would be a little less work, I suppose.  I wouldn't mind experimenting (in fact, I would love to), but it won't be cheap as you said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardilla 

...

Are all Beyer pads the same dimensions? ...

...

Beyer dealers sells the same leather pads for the 770/880/990, so I assume the answer is "yes" for these HP models.
 

They all use the same driver, too, from what I've read.  The differences are mostly in the construction and dampening; makes sense the all use the same size pads.

(Correct me if I'm wrong.)

I think I must have the world's worst T50RP! I got the Akasa foam in today and took my time on starting over from scratch.

First I removed all my Blu-tack except what was on the baffle. I made sure every single area was covered with the foam except for the vent. When this was done, it sounded just as bad as when I used Blu-Tack and lighter foam.

100% zero change. I then just did a small test and added an old piece of foam to the cups. It's just two small cutouts from a piece of foam. The type found in a pillow kind of. This made the mids a lot more forward and it really got to my ears and annoyed me. Too forward!

The sound was VERY muffled though, but less cave-like. I removed the foam pieces and kept the original Akasa in there. Next I just out a large square piece of Akasa foam and placed it in there. The sound was even more clear and the mids were even better. How the heck does that happen?!

So the sound was slightly better and even seemed to improve when I put some ultra thin foam under the earpads (not the Akasa obviously). However it's possible, it even helped the clarity a bit.

Right now overall they sound not very good at all. Not sure why. They do many things right, but the sound still is kind of muffled and not too clear. Nothing horrible. I hate my Sextett, but these at the moment feel like a half-a**ed version of that. It's really frustrating that I spent all that time and gotten nowhere. I'll figure out some things and go from there. I do know that if I keep the vents open the bass is very excessive. Right now I have it covered with a piece of foam temporarily. I don't think it's over-dampened. When I had less in there, everything sounded so distant and muffled.

Next thing I might do is replace the blu-tack with that modeling clay stuff. The highs right now are EXTREMELY rolled off. Cymbals are..gone? It just feels like the whole signature is completely missing something. Ugh, everything feels kind of distant and not in a good way. Still not horrible. Right now it just feels like a slightly above average $70 headphone.

I'll check all the old threads and see if I can come up with something. Maybe dampening the driver itself with different materials will help. I tried it with some felt, but that probably was too thick and it killed the mids. I think the main issue I have is that level of clarity is low and the highs are VERY rolled off.

I'll keep trying.

You need to mass damp the cup and the baffle and line the cup with the akasa as well.  You need all of it because the do different jobs.  Mass damping the cups gets rid of resonances.  Mass damping the baffle get rid of more resonances and keeps the baffle from moving with the driver and muddying up the sound.  The akasa foam drastically reduces high midrange and treble reflections form the back of the cup which mess up the soundstage.  You need to do all of that to fix the stock enclosures and let the drivers shine through.

I'd assume that modeling clay is better than bultak but I've never tried the clay.  I used dynamat extreme with the foil left on and its worked great for me. The inside of the cups and the outside of the baffles of my pair are covered with dynamat.

I've got these sounding pretty good with felt blankets which kill a lot of the resonating tone, I'm using this in conjunction with Blu-Tack which I didn't find did a lot by it's self. I might do the whole phone with felt and remove the cover from the driver... still playing around with it.

Things are getting better. They're close to being quite good, but I don't know if I'm there yet. These things are extremely ear fatiguing without foam across the driver under the earpad! I don't know how anyone could stand it. I did try them with and without foam over the driver under the earpad.

So here is what I did so far that gave me the best results:

1) applied Blu-Tack to baffle

2) Put Akasa foam in bottom of cup. I read a post that said that putting the foam below the vent inside killed his highs. I think that had a lot of do with my original sound problem. I also had some Akasa lining the edges and perhaps that was overkill. I took these thin strips out without any negative results.

3) I first put ONE rectangle piece of Akasa on the center "post". I then still didn't like the results, so I put ANOTHER layer. Basically enough to cover a large area. Somehow it didn't ruin the sound, but improved it. No idea how. This also reminded me of how I previously crammed some non-Akasa foam in there on my first attempt days ago and it sounded better than LESS. Both times the material was very close to touching the driver.

4) I tried putting various foams and felts over the driver below the earpad and didn't like the results. I got the best results from using cabinet liner with holes in it! I really liked the sound when I used this. I'm not sure how that seemed to help so much, but it did! Another person on here does this as well. I thought it'd hurt the sound.

The vent is open. I tried to cover it and it seemed to kill the sound. Previously leaving it open caused me to have bloated bass. I think now that the Akasa foam is so close to the driver it may limit the bass somehow? The bass is now very very good though, but not excessive. No matter what I've tried (even out of the box and very little Akasa) I've never been able to change the highs much. They're now there and much better than the results I got earlier.

I still can't figure out why I get the best results by just cramming more Akasa in there. Very strange. Adding more has not degraded the sound in any way and has actually HELPED?! The thing is though that the double layer of Akasa is ONLY in the center and none of the other areas have excessive Akasa foam. I had similar results when a few days ago I put a circle of Blu-Tack here for testing. Whenever I add more material, so that it's closer to touching the driver, the sound suddenly becomes more clear?! It's a mystery to me why this would be.

I even tried dampening the driver with Micropore tape, but that just seemed to make the sound worse. Using felt killed the mids.

Other than dampening the baffle, the only things that seemed to change the sound was adding more layers of material (foam) or changing the material under the earpad. Using felt and anything other than foam and blu-tack has seemed to hurt the sound. I even was crazy and tried furniture felt and had HORRIBLE results. Don't ask me why I did that.  Very thin layers of Akasa did absolutely nothing for me and the sound was muffled. I did have the baffle filled in with Blu-tack. It seems that adding material around the center post changes the sound the most. I do think that adding foam below the vent might negatively effect the sound, but I'm not 100% sure of this.

One thing you might want to try is removing the foam over the vent. It's easy to reverse. It made a HUGE difference in the sound for me. After that also try removing those two tiny pieces of felt below the vent. This seemed to change the sound for me and improve the highs. On mine I cut off the felt under the earpads exposing the driver itself. There's still a piece of fabric there to keep it closed off though. Using cabinet liner with holes in it worked really well for me under the earpads. It may be hard for some to believe!

If you need any Akasa I have a TON of it left! I really have noticed zero difference between that and using Blu-Tack/cheap foam though. Not sure if the Akasa foam was worth what I paid ($17 shipped for a ton of it).

No clue why on earth I had to do this, but I had to stack two rectangular pieces of Akasa foam on my center "post" to get the sound to be clear. It nearly touched the driver. Without that there my bass was really excessive.

Maybe I just have a really picky T50RP.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graphicism 

I've got these sounding pretty good with felt blankets which kill a lot of the resonating tone, I'm using this in conjunction with Blu-Tack which I didn't find did a lot by it's self. I might do the whole phone with felt and remove the cover from the driver... still playing around with it.