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finally a little modding talk in a modding thread at least ! but at the risk of adnauseum.......just a little clarification. devouring/chris has my theory correct for the most part although it's seems to have been made unecessarily complicated......but I can add, again - my advice was not arrived at 'theory first', the theory came after as a way to try and understand, and it really only applies to those 1. who love the RS sound signature that john stumbled upon, 2. who value/listen to 'traditional' music or 3. are 'musician minded' and want that quality of open air instruments to come through in a headphone (campB as it where)........Each camp is of value. So don't sweat these details unless you are hardcore in the above ways. At least for those reasons I can vouch for this approach. It may or may not also benefit modern non referential sounds but who would know when dubstep sounds 'right'.........All in all the driver is much more a factor in any of this imo. the cup details and how the driver mates up with it are ways to maximize/minimize qualities the driver brings to the table, unless the cup's qualities are so intrusive that they start to figure larger in the sound equation. The RS style cup seems to be of the minimally invasive variety as is my approach where transparency/lack of wood color are the guiding lights in addition to retaining the RS 'snap'/dynamics........
By dead I only mean cups that aim to be the most inert, non-resonant, hardest/heaviest possible. Completely dead could be exponentially difficult to achieve (the PS-1 has to be the best in that department, and a PS-1000 fully in metal would be better; you get the idea), and they fall into what I just labeled Camp A for convenience.
Joseph and John Grado, Rhydon, MartinCustomAudio and TurbulentLabs all make cups that fall into Camp A; some choose to make it this way (Joe Grado, Rhydon; huh, FreeSystems Germany [for the PS-1], lol), some fall into it incidentally (the rest).
Camp B never was a category in my mind until I stumbled upon your work sir, that is about making the cups smaller and fine tuning them to shape the final sound signature and some other driver behaviors (the stuff that appears as negative or positive on measurements). Cups influence sound (of a given driver), at least its direction, in Camp B; Camp A only increases that direction.
School B is not better strictly better than A; if all drivers were perfect and according to everyone's liking, School B would loose its purpose and fade away.
This is Head-Fi, it's about finding the best possible sound; I'm not defining what is "best sound" for anyone but I think that once you got your hands on a increasingly decent/good sounding driver, every details after are also increasingly important as they are equally permanent members of the same equation.
I'm pointing out that foam tape is a practical way of making a driver stay in a hole, but that I don't think that this method has been chosen among others for being the most appropriate, best sounding one.
Foam tape, in this scenario, the way I see it, will bring pretty much everything in the middle; it will lessen the effect of the quality of the cups (if such thing there is; I think there should) (quality in terms of the particularity/uniqueness of the cups as a member of the equation, not quality in terms of grade on a continuum), lessen the product of an eventual communication/interaction with a given driver, and ultimately lessen the amplitude of the final taste (good or bad; hopefully good, but here it will be slightly less than good, 'middle-good') of your new headphone. And I think that this influence/effect of bringing in the middle will be the same for any driver and in any cups. It doesn't have a sound on its own, it's an influence. Of course it's just details, do whatever you want.
Bad sounding cups will become less than bad sounding, 'middle-bad'... But when you meet someone or make a sculpture you begin with the whole block and you remove pieces, not the other way around (which would be like gluing back together the pieces of a broken vase) (you start by thinking the world of something and you progressively remove bits to shape it to what it is really as a mental scheme); so if I were you I would start with the assumption that your cups are good sounding, and I would avoid (living) using foam tape; of course you can always try it, undo it, proceed to try others, etc.
