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The HER 2000 power unit without the headphones sold as BIN for 49 € a day or so ago. If you factor in the usual price of the phones themselves at 35 € or so, you end up with ~85 € total, which would be at the high end of what a 2000 + power unit combo usually goes for. In the end then, you'd possibly need to bite the bullet once on the power unit even if you manage to get the phones for cheap.
 
Though you're still getting them cheaper all in all than a Stax 80 + power unit. No idea how the Unipolar compares to the Stax electrets, though.
 
In other news, a pair of vintage Sennheiser HD 530 are heading the way of my base of measurement operations. It'll be interesting - I hope - to put the two old Senns against each other.

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hey that's a great discovery.
 So you tried pads direct to baffle, wondering if you simply kept that side grille and sealed up all the holes with tape what happens, better spacial sound with the same ~30hz bass?

I tried it with duct tape but the sound got honky. Could try to make a smaller inner ring around the baffle, as on the 2002.

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It seems that if I change the input (i.e. where I connect the source on the amp) from CD/AUX to TAPE or TUNER, the sound improves, the channel balance is better, and a quick measurement of a 1 kHz tone shows notably less distortion than previously (all this tested with the HP-50S; also remeasured the CD/AUX input and it still gave poor distortion). How's that possible?
 
I've always used the CD/AUX input and indeed don't remember it sounding bad until late last year or so. Shouldn't most of the inputs basically run to the same place internally on the amp? So if one's bad, they're all bad?
 
Anyway, don't have time to do full measurements on this or testing with the Unipolar now. Will need to do it tomorrow.

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The HP-50 measured out of the speaker amp (phone out) but this time using the TAPE/EXT input. Compare to the earlier graph (2nd in the earlier post) that showed high amounts of the 3rd harmonic - this looks more normal and closer to the first graph, if somewhat high on the 3rd still. So it appears my CD/AUX input on the amp has broken somehow. Or maybe the contacts are just dirty or something.
 
I've seen other harmonic distortion measurements of the Yamaha HP series, and they usually seem to  have between 0.2-0.5% on the 2nd harmonic even in the lower frequencies above 100 Hz. That my graphs show lower may mean one of at least two things: either my HP-50 have unusually low distortion in the 2nd, or - the more likely explanation - my sound level isn't quite up to 90 dB SPL. It does sound pretty damn loud, though, not quite painful but way more than comfortable. In any case, whether it's 90 dB or not, all these graphs are measured at roughly the same level nonetheless.
 
I'll measure the Unipolar later and see how the change of input changed their sound and other measurements as well.

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vid said:

 
What I don't understand is, why did Sennheiser keep the slotted side grille on the 2002? Judging by the pictures, it serves no apparent purpose.
 

Click to expand...

 
Never doubt the will at Sennheiser to save some money where they can.  They already had the molds so why not use them... 

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Seriously where do all these good deals come from. I've looked on ebay.de for past 2 weeks for these none popped up.