ADE tuned Beyerdynamic T1

Hi T1 owners! Happy new year BTW
 
Here comes a little T1 tuning story, I sticked with my T1 for a few weeks now, and love all the strengths of this headphone, except the 8 kHz peak that make the sound a bit harsh and synthetic, in this case the HD800 do better (asymmetrical housing, more later on), but the Senns don't fit onto my marble.
 
Till now I corrected the T1 peak with a EQ, but this was not really satisfying, I want a T1 at it's best with every source and pure direct sound.
 
As told, the cause for the peak is the circleround housing, the angled positioning of the driver may help to minimize amplitude peaks in some frequency regions (a Beyer technician told me this), but is no solution for the 8 kHz problem, the peak is still to extreme to ignore it.
 
How to make a keeper out of a technical tempting T1?
 
My first trials to fix the peak with damping materials in the driver chamber worked, but they also affected the great T1 soundstage, tooked to much highs and sounded compressed in the lower mids / bass.
 
But now, after the 3rd round of experimental damping (less is more), I reached to eliminate the peak without bothering the transparence of the Beyer, antipode: The T1 sound is overall flawless and colorful. Mrs. Melua never had such a clear voice, and there is no loss in high frequencies (except the ugly peak).
Dropp off (or not, depends on the individual): Low frequencies / bass sound getting slightly punchier.
 
How to do?
 
All you need is a little polishing cotton wool and a thin binder. Just twist some cotton wool to a compact "tampon" that stays in form and fix it with the binder to the mass cable. If you want to, wrap the tampon slightly with a thread to fix the form.
 
The ADE (acoustic damping element alias tampon ) splits the round housing in 2 halfs (less interferences caused by the new geometrical design of the housing) and absorps the sound particle velocity (correct translation?) around 8 kHz.
Don't make the tampon bigger than that you see at the picture. Make sure the ADE is compact and clamps between housing and baffle when reassembling. The ADE reaches to the big driver vent hole, so it's covering 1/3 of the driver.
Avoid covering the sound pervious areas more than required – voilà.
 

 
Enjoy
 

Lol wut?

Good idea to ease it, I also found the T1's work enthusiasm in the upper mids a bit annoying.

Hi,
 
yo ... I know it looks pretty simple and improvised, and it is
 
But it works perfect for now. The next step could be to cut a foamchock that replaces the tampon. This could look more professional, but if it works as well?
 

why would anyone want to do that to their expensive cans is beyond my comprehension. If Beyer felt it needed more damping on their flagship headphone they would have done it. To each his own but I would not mess with the T1 and I hear an extended treble with my tube gear. The reason I purchased the T1 was because I found it was one of the few headphones that did pretty much everything right. And to use a Tampon to boot.

Are you sure this is not going to cause a big suckout at 3.3K Hz rather than 8K Hz? 

This is brilliant if it works as well as the graph indicates.  Why anyone wouldn't do this to their T1 would be beyond my comprehension.  The T1 is neat, but that treble peak kills it for me.  Some might call the treble peak added sparkle.  I call it annoying.
 
Well done.  Now if I only owned a T1...

Quote:

ham sandwich said:

This is brilliant if it works as well as the graph indicates.  Why anyone wouldn't do this to their T1 would be beyond my comprehension.  The T1 is neat, but that treble peak kills it for me.  Some might call the treble peak added sparkle.  I call it annoying.
 
Well done.  Now if I only owned a T1...

Click to expand...

there is no sparkle. The tube amp I use plays the T1 without any harhsness in the treble. It is extended and sounds natural to me on my gear and I do own it and pay very little attention to graphs and let the music tell the story. If you do not own it how can you say it is annoying. I spend many hours with them and with the right gear it sound top tier to me and others here who own them.

 
Quote:

frank i said:

there is no sparkle. The tube amp I use plays the T1 without any harhsness in the treble. It is extended and sounds natural to me on my gear and I do own it and pay very little attention to graphs and let the music tell the story. If you do not own it how can you say it is annoying. I spend many hours with them and with the right gear it sound top tier to me and others here who own them.

Click to expand...

I've heard them at meets.  Not the same as owning them.  I know meets aren't the best place for listening and comparing.  But at least I've heard them.  And a couple different pairs on different amps.
 
The treble isn't harsh at all.  It just peaks.  It's not as piercing as a DT990, but still more peaked than I would like in that range.  We all hear headphone treble differently.  One persons subtle sparkle can be another persons uncomfortable or annoying treble peak.  It's not right or wrong to have a treble peak like that.  It just is what it is and depends on individual hearing as to whether it is a good thing or bad thing.
 
I completely understand why the OP wants to remove that treble peak.  I hand out a congratulations for experimenting and figuring out a simple non-destructive mod to do it to his satisfaction.  That to me is pretty neat.  I wouldn't have thought that a wad of cotton would so selectively absorb a narrow treble peak like that.  I'm impressed.

I might try it out.. there's definitely a harsh treble in the T1 that isn't present in my LCD-2 and it was the only flaw I could find with them.

Quote:

frank i said:

If Beyer felt it needed more damping on their flagship headphone they would have done it.
 

Click to expand...

Too much respect of Beyer's "godlike" engineers IMO. They are as human as you & me are, they have to use the loo regulary, and they bleed when they cut into their fingers.
 
There's no such thing as "true" tonality, just personal listening habits. I've been at Sennheiser at Wedemark, only a handful of folks there decide how a new model gets tuned. At Sennheiser, there isn't anybody in this group representing more "remote" genres, and it kind of shows. I'll eat the pads of my 880 right away, if they solved this taste-and-tune problem more wisely at Beyer in Heilbronn - and it kind of shows as well.

What. 
 
 
Just kidding. Mods like this always impress me with their effectiveness. I did something small like this to my HD448's (the T1 is on another level though) and it did wonders IMHO. All I did was cover a little hole.

 
Quote:

nickchen said:

Quote:

frank i said:

If Beyer felt it needed more damping on their flagship headphone they would have done it.
 

Click to expand...

Too much respect of Beyer's "godlike" engineers IMO. They are as human as you & me are, they have to use the loo regulary, and they bleed when they cut into their fingers.
 
There's no such thing as "true" tonality, just personal listening habits. I've been at Sennheiser at Wedemark, only a handful of folks there decide how a new model gets tuned. At Sennheiser, there isn't anybody in this group representing more "remote" genres, and it kind of shows. I'll eat the pads of my 880 right away, if they solved this taste-and-tune problem more wisely at Beyer in Heilbronn - and it kind of shows as well.

Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with the treble of the T1. It does not need any mods IMO and I do own it

I have heard the T1 at a couple of meets now and it is definitely a brighter sounding headphone especially in comparison to the LCD-2 but that is because they cater to different listeners. Having said that, if this mod does a very modest change to the sound signature in the one area the OP finds annoying then he's hit the jackpot!... for him. For those that find their T1 is perfect already I wholeheartedly suggest just leaving them alone, but don't rain on the parade of someone else trying to tweak their gear. I own the D7000 and love it in it's stock configuration but I don't feel any need to rain on the JMoney pad or the Markl mods. I think modding is one of the fun aspects of the hobby part of headphones especially ones that are 100% reversible like this one.

Interesting.
 
How does the shrillness of the T1 compare to the DT-880?
The latter is my can of choice for most applications.
Tried the entire range and I like the 880s the best.
 
I read that the T1 is closest to the 880, so would like some opinions.