cup tuning basics. - Page 17

the impressions:

limba draws you into the sound more but the zebra is tight and lively with a driving beat. Different vibes. zebra is strong and bold and has the top and bottom nailed while limba is weak there but in a friendly unhostile way and does the mids right, so the tradeoff's are easier to live with. Zebra does sound like one of the least problematic exotics though, probably because it is not as dense as most of the others. Hard to say why really.

vocals further back with zebra and overall sound is more even and balanced but a bit dry. limba is more affected, less dry/more soft, with vocals and mids more up front center and no trace of harshness upper mids.......part of this may be because of the different inner finish treatments, but I don't suspect entirely.

limba vs iroko.

iroko is a softer hardwood not too much different than hond mahog. But has some softwood characteristics mahog does not.........

quite different sounds.  note different v4 drivers as well

iroko is all about the upper mids, limba lower mids.

will exchange out these drivers in opposite cups and relisten to see if its the drivers and cups or just drivers, because I know these drivers are smilarly low/high mid centered by themselves.

iroko and limba with swapped drivers: iroko now has the softer worn in drivers

wow.  what a great example of reverse synergy. These both sound quite bad, iroko and worn in driver especially. I would feel sorry for the guy who would have bought that pairing. I've never heard such a sound, It was wrong in almost everyway and basically un listenable. This is the power of wood. with plastic or metal there is little variation within each species, with wood, it's all over the place. Iroko did not sound great with the other drivers, but with the grey set, it was a match made not made in heaven for sure.

I'm convinced as well that limba really only shines with some examples of v4's. This effort is increasingly becoming an art of matching driver to cups to finish to cable to particular personal tastes. It's not a case of this wood is spectacular always and at all times. It's about synergy between the parts and frankly alot of trial and error. i.e. time

wood can be a real drag on the v4 and from my research, I'd suggest aluminum unless one wants to take his chances with wood. So much variation within wood cups out there. Sound shouldn't be left open to such influence without personal attention to dialing it in. I guess that's where the diy modding thing comes in but it's also expensive to try many cups for the average comsumer.

I'm listening to these iroko while typing. Holy c#$ I can't take it any longer. horrid sounds................... And these are my favorite drivers with most other cups.....................it's all about matching. I wonder if there are some drivers out there for you iroko?

I've tried indian rosewood and brazilian cherry.  but not braz rosewood

tried the grey drivers in zebra and then back in limba. The drivers signature sure does carry over into each, from iroko on through, but definite difference in all the cups. they sound best in limba as far as basic synergy. There they will stay. one more set complete finally.

swapped out copper for silver cable into v4's in limba.  silver may have more clarity, detail and punch but seems to aggrevate any upper end issues a cup or driver may have. I can't get silver to gel with any of the magnums i've tried it with. It has nice qualities but for me they are not enough to put up with and copper sounds more natural and less fatigueing.

actually i did notice a difference between grado copper and mogami copper. grado cable has a little more solidity to the sound. less 'air' and maybe even a touch darker than the mogami. but both sound like copper. I think the grado cables works with the mahogany and tends to offset that wood's overly airy quality. overall i like the mogami just fine too.  but either of those have still plenty of detail to hold my interest. a detail freak should probably use silver all else being equal......never tried any other coppers like canare

what is natural sound? does anyone know or care?  natural sound is characterized by lack of headaches and annoyances, accurate instrument and vocal presentation and realistic dynamic levels. lp's are more natural than cd's generally speaking both due to the dynamic levels and truness of instruments. the magnum driver is more natural than the grado driver for the same reasons, especially if the rest of the headphone is built with that goal in mind.

poor instrument representation and extra-ordinary presentations are equally unatural. Sounds that immediately impress are suspect. everytime i put any driver in cocobolo for example, I was hit with the feeling that things are over the top. a recent post-er mentioned his mags in coco made his cd's sound like they were re-mastered and that pretty much sums up that wood in my experience. except I don't want my albums remastered. alot of them sound perfect as they were originally made and those that don't can be bought as remastered. What does a remastered cd sound like with cocobolo? remastered 2x?  That wood in particular was a sure headache maker for me but i admit it did impress in it's overly punchy and supra-natural presentation of sound.

I think this forum is filled with people who wouldn't know natural sound if they heard it. natural sound does not wow a person in the short term. natural sound allows for real music to wow a person over time through getting into the performance not from the dynamic nature of the sound. Sound is sound and music is music. there is a difference. Sennheisers, grados and beyers for example are not natural sounding either. each in different ways, grados are unatural in the upper mids, beyers in the trebles and senns in the presentation. my opinion of course.

After some back and forth with the maker of the mag and listening to 12 examples of the v4 i'm convinced he is of the natural sound camp. tuning the cup is spart of doing the driver jsutice but more and more it's becoming about tuning the headphone in total, the synergy of cup/finish/driver/cable. of the 12 drivers and 60 cups i've tried to develop into a natural sounding headphone i've succeded twice. it ain't easy and the final headphone does not wow, but i wouldn't trade if for any mass produced phone.  the day cup makers become headphone tuners is the day the magnum will reach it's potential and benefit society. natural sound reminds people what it means to be human and not machine and there are increasingly few things that serve that purpose.

I love it when people disagree and say so. very rare. I disagree with some of it as well....like the bumper sticker that says don't believe everything you think........this little thread is me talking to myself. it's thinking out loud to organize thoughts and focus.......and don't we all say things to ourselves that part of us agrees with and another part says, now hold on, how can you think such a thing. and by dialectic of outrageous thought/sensible thought/synthesis things move forward. no outrageous thought, no progress. like the thought that there can be a planet with no war. how outrageous a thought if one looks at history. war seems inevitable and yet i think and imagine a world with out it anyway. while machines never entertain the possibility and so the little machines feed the big war machine. natural sound could save the world as far as i'm concerned. It will happen, what else can do it? music is the universe's olive branch.