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Using a resistor to quiet m50's

post #1 of 5
12/16/10 at 3:47pm
Thread Starter 
I have a pair of m50s that are too loud in quiet environments so I'm planning to make a short jumper cable with an in-line resistor that will decrease the amount of power going to the headphones. My problem is that I don't know what line to put the resistor on (ground or the two positives) and what resistance to use. At one bar on my iPod touch the music is a bit too loud to comfortably listen to in silent conditions, so to make the volume of one bar sound the same as about 7 bars with resistors, what resistance should i use, and also, where should I order them from?

tl;dr - what resistance resistors should I use to reduce the volume of my M50s?
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post #2 of 5
12/16/10 at 5:03pm

Inline is fine (2 positives).  Try 120ohm and go lower if it's too much.  The tone will be affected, but it's a trade off.

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post #3 of 5
12/16/10 at 7:30pm
Thread Starter 
How much of a tone difference would that be? Something substantial or minute?
-thanks
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post #4 of 5
12/16/10 at 7:58pm

try it and see.  you can always remove them or use other values.  generally, the high frequency is reduced a tad, which brings forward other frequencies.  it's not horrible, for headphones like beyer i prefer the 120ohm resistor there.

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post #5 of 5
12/17/10 at 10:43am

You could build a little transformer box :)

 

Radio-Shack sells little baby 1K:8ohm audio transformers for like $3 each. I think Xicon sells them through mouser too!

 

wire the 1K side to the source, and the 8ohm side to the headphones (with an optional resistor across them, I didnt use) and away you go.
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by holland View Post

it's not horrible, for headphones like beyer i prefer the 120ohm resistor there.


I agree, Beyer seems to design around the 120-ohm IEC output standard.

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