[Review] Brainwavz HM5, A New Neutral Champ - Page 10

I will do some measurements with HM5s once I get them. But I'm still waiting for some advice for setting up the recording rig without a dummy from purrin. Perhaps, I should make a thread in the science sub-forum to ask about it.

Any opinions on these for gaming? And what's the best shipping method to Australia? Would like to get it ASAP since my headphones band snapped a couple of days ago :(

 

edit: Any idea on how the bass would compare to the SRH440s?

Edited by Autonomic - 12/24/11 at 5:09pm

When it comes to gamng you should look at the fa-003's, those and these cans are supposedly the same. UNforunately there are very few gaming reviews of the HM5's at the moment. You'll have to wait a little for that to happen since so fews got them at the moment

The FA-003/HM5 have pretty big soundstages for a closed headphone. If you need a gaming closed-back headphone, it is one of the better choices.

Hi Guys! My set just arrived and I'm so excited. This is my first set of real headphones.

 

For burn-in, what do you do? Just leave them playing random songs at a moderate level for a week or so?

 

~All the Best   :)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by rus1234 - 12/24/11 at 6:30pm

 

 

There's no 100% agreed upon method of burning in a headphone. I'm a fan of the method that just has you listen to the headphones and let them burn-in over time. Some people use pink noise, some people use bass-heavy music, some people use their typical music. . . Almost everyone has a different style. In the long run, it shouldn't really matter. 

I've been messing around with my HM5s for a few hours now. You'll notice that the cups have a very small vent on each side near where the headband connects to the cups. I've covered up roughly half of each vent and have found this dramatically reduces the strange bass bloat I've been hearing. It's still not perfect, but it's much better.

 

I've also removed the original felt dampening in the cups and replaced it with a layer of Dynamat with Silverstone acoustic foam on top of that. I've also applied some Dynamat around the driver and other various places. I may post pictures of this later. 

 

With these tweaks/mods, they around sounding much better to my ears overall. They're still a bit too thick sounding in some recordings, but it's not so blatantly off now.

Quote:

Will do. I did not really notice much of a change in sound with the Dynamat and acoustic foam vs the stock dampening felt. The main thing is that I think the weird characteristics of the bass come mostly from too large of vents in the cups. The holes that keep the headband attached aren't airtight either when the headband is attached. One thing I noticed is that if those were covered up but the vent slits weren't, they actually sounded pretty nice overall. Of course, you have to hold the cups on your head if you do that, haha.

 

Ok, can you provide us with some photos of those vents? I'm just curious. Regards

What about the detail? Can someone compare this with SRH940?

Edited by yuri olive - 12/25/11 at 2:22pm

 

What did you use to cover up the vents? It seems to me that the bloat is going away on its own with burn-in, but I may try this just for fun anyway.

Quote:

Ugly brown electrical tape on the outside for now, haha.

 

Here are the pictures of everything I've done. I did not take a picture with the original felt dampening in place.

 

Dynamat in the cups:

 

 

Silverstone acoustic foam on top of that:

 

 

Dynamat around the driver and more on the cup. I may eventually put some acoustic foam on top of it, but I doubt it makes much of a difference:

 

 

Here you can see one of the vents on the cup with the electrical tape covering roughly half of it. I am still experimenting with this, but I have done this to both vents on each of the cups:

 

 

Great pictures and mods ! at least we are one step closer to finding out

if it is a FA-003 twin .... Hint, look at the following link:

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/491632/review-fischer-audio-fa-003-a-neutral-champ/840#post_7279015

 

looks familiar ?

 

 

 

 

Edited by mmda - 12/25/11 at 12:13pm

Quote:

Thanks! I know some other people have modded their FA-003s like I did, so I thought I'd try it out.

 

I'm fairly certain these are identical to the FA-003s. After listening to them, looking at the FA-003 measurements, running a sine sweep on these, and opening them up, I have no reason to believe they aren't the same.

 

I also tried removing the small piece of foam behind the drivers to see how that would change the sound. Didn't really notice a difference, and it's not exactly easy or fast to do A/B comparisons with it. 

 

I can say that I'm really enjoying these now. After the mods, the treble is a bit too sharp for my tastes. It's nice and detailed, but feels somewhat artificial and piercing at times. I also can't pick up some of the fine details in the music like I can with my T50RPs, which are not as bright.