I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I've never seen it mentioned before so here I go...
Ok. So, when I was doing the whole crazy S-10 thing, one thing I got to do was take the entire housing off and essentially make the CD3Ks a perfectly open pair of phones. For those of you who are not familiar with my S-10, here is the link:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...&highlight=S10
Well, as many of you know, the inside of the CD3K is not the most exciting:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...threadid=37966
But anyhow. I was actually expecting a much more open and in general better sound with the cups off. However, what I found was a more subdued, and much warmer sound that didn't sound as nice. Kind of losing the CD3K characteristic, in a way. Sound was in general flabbier, with lost focus and clarity.
This was really strange at the time, but because I was so concentrated on turning my CD3Ks into the S-10, I just went on without giving that much thought.
Then, a few weeks later...
Just yesterday I came across the software headphone spatialization plugins thread and downloaded the 4Front Headphones plugin. And wow, I was quite impressed, it sounded like I was in a room with steel walls but I could definately "see" the room, without the sound being too colored. Basically, really nice soundstaging.
One thing I noticed that this plugin did was add echo/reverb to create the room effect. I understand that many recordings go through this phase of adding artificial reverb to add a spatial dimension to the music, and even the beloved linkwitz crossfeed does something similar, except it goes one step further by mixing channels and delaying the signals.
But anyhow, this made me think of the CD3Ks - why did removing the rather poorly damped housing reduce the soundstaging and overall detail of the cans? Also, why did Sony choose to put those gigantic cups over the cans if they were not going to make them completely sealed anyway?
Well, my thought is that the reflections from the cups is crucial in reproducing the giant soundstage and added detail in the sound coming from the CD3Ks. Soft of like a simple reverb mechanism in the cans, I guess. And the Sony engineers probably tuned the drivers to match this specific reverb characteristic of the enclosure.
And with this soft of natural reverb mechanism, a gigantic soundstage is created.
Of course, the delay is going to be ridiculously short since sound travels at ~300m/s and there's like what, less than 0.1m distance round-trip for the waves in the housing. However, our ears are one of the most precise (if not THE most, IMO) sensory instruments of the human body and so although the very short delay may not be perceived obviously, the subtle effect will change the overall perception of sound.
But yeah, so this is probably also where a lot of the color comes from. And also probably why the R-10 sounds so good compared to the CD3Ks when they're quite similar. More than other cans (especially open cans like Senns or Grados) I feel, the CD3Ks and R-10s are going to be very dependent on the enclosure material as what the listener hears is partly and directly dependent on the waves reflected off the enclosure.
If one has some nice CNC capabilities it would be very interesting to make custom CD3K cups out of different materials (wood, perhaps?) to hear the different sonic characteristics of different materials on the CD3Ks.
But anyhow. Yeah, a recent revelation regarding my CD3Ks, just wanted to share with you guys. Please correct me if my theory is wrong!
In the meanwhile:
[edit: added some detail]
Ok. So, when I was doing the whole crazy S-10 thing, one thing I got to do was take the entire housing off and essentially make the CD3Ks a perfectly open pair of phones. For those of you who are not familiar with my S-10, here is the link:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...&highlight=S10
Well, as many of you know, the inside of the CD3K is not the most exciting:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...threadid=37966
But anyhow. I was actually expecting a much more open and in general better sound with the cups off. However, what I found was a more subdued, and much warmer sound that didn't sound as nice. Kind of losing the CD3K characteristic, in a way. Sound was in general flabbier, with lost focus and clarity.
This was really strange at the time, but because I was so concentrated on turning my CD3Ks into the S-10, I just went on without giving that much thought.
Then, a few weeks later...
Just yesterday I came across the software headphone spatialization plugins thread and downloaded the 4Front Headphones plugin. And wow, I was quite impressed, it sounded like I was in a room with steel walls but I could definately "see" the room, without the sound being too colored. Basically, really nice soundstaging.
One thing I noticed that this plugin did was add echo/reverb to create the room effect. I understand that many recordings go through this phase of adding artificial reverb to add a spatial dimension to the music, and even the beloved linkwitz crossfeed does something similar, except it goes one step further by mixing channels and delaying the signals.
But anyhow, this made me think of the CD3Ks - why did removing the rather poorly damped housing reduce the soundstaging and overall detail of the cans? Also, why did Sony choose to put those gigantic cups over the cans if they were not going to make them completely sealed anyway?
Well, my thought is that the reflections from the cups is crucial in reproducing the giant soundstage and added detail in the sound coming from the CD3Ks. Soft of like a simple reverb mechanism in the cans, I guess. And the Sony engineers probably tuned the drivers to match this specific reverb characteristic of the enclosure.
And with this soft of natural reverb mechanism, a gigantic soundstage is created.
Of course, the delay is going to be ridiculously short since sound travels at ~300m/s and there's like what, less than 0.1m distance round-trip for the waves in the housing. However, our ears are one of the most precise (if not THE most, IMO) sensory instruments of the human body and so although the very short delay may not be perceived obviously, the subtle effect will change the overall perception of sound.
But yeah, so this is probably also where a lot of the color comes from. And also probably why the R-10 sounds so good compared to the CD3Ks when they're quite similar. More than other cans (especially open cans like Senns or Grados) I feel, the CD3Ks and R-10s are going to be very dependent on the enclosure material as what the listener hears is partly and directly dependent on the waves reflected off the enclosure.
If one has some nice CNC capabilities it would be very interesting to make custom CD3K cups out of different materials (wood, perhaps?) to hear the different sonic characteristics of different materials on the CD3Ks.
But anyhow. Yeah, a recent revelation regarding my CD3Ks, just wanted to share with you guys. Please correct me if my theory is wrong!
In the meanwhile:
[edit: added some detail]
.
heh.
Out of head soundstaging refers to the illusion that when you close your eyes, sounds extend well beyond your ears, you can hear sound emmanating from space above, behind, and beyond the head. In other words, when you picture the soundstage, it's larger than the space between your ears. As far as which phone is "more neutral" or has a bigger or more realistic soundstage, it's a bit premature for any pronouncements when one of the cans being compared hasn't been heard yet by the comparer.
