Moved from full size headphones section:
The below describes how to modify a pair of AKG K171 studio headphones to give a more full bodied and upfront sound signature.
This mod is pretty easy, but requires some 80mm foam pads (got from China) to replace the exisiting pleather ones, the below pads were ordered from jntworld, took ages to arrive but were, of course, worth the wait.
They are large enough to slip over the 80mm housing and give an perfect fit.
Just adding the foam above does remove some of the top end, to address this simply add a thin ring of foam to the inside of the black foam (about 2mm thick):
I also removed the thin film AKG glued over the vents in the plastic housing, not sure if this helped but the K171's sound so much more full, especially on Rammstein for some reason:
Anyway, this is what they look like now:
Closeup of the pads:
I have been using a pair of Koss Portapros as a benchmark, before this mod, the K171's sounded too flat, maybe even thin, presumably due to their studio design purpose, after the mod they sound as full as the Portapros but have a much more balanced and natural sound signature, I tested the modded headphones against Rammstein and the Deftones through my X-CAN v3, using a Rega Planet 2000 as the source.
However, they do loose quite a bit of sound isoloation due to foam being used in place of the original pleather pads.
Let me know if anyone else has tries anything similar and what the benefits in sound quality are.
