My week old DT990's just died - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by SKilleT 

I know I am asking too much but please bare with me.

Since you have the DT990 and the DT880 can you please EQ the bass for the DT880 and compare it to the DT990 ? I just want the same bass as the 990 but without the harsh highs the dt990 have.

I still didn't order the DT880 and still waiting for more confirmation that the ft990 and the 880 are close..

The problem is that I am stuck and have to choose one of the beyerdynamics is because they have amazing velour pads and other companies that have velour pads don't have good bass... like AKG and Sennheiser....

I just posted the EQ you need to ump the 880's bass up to 990 levels. It won't make them sound the same but as close as you can get with an EQ.

I suspect your brain is caught in "got to have the best" mode, which will make you unhappy. Neither are the best. They are equally good but different. The 880 is closer to a reference sound and the 990 is like an 880 that has been tweaked to sound awesome.

I'll make some other analogies until I hit one that you get better.

The 880 is a neutral density filter

The 990 is a rose colored filter

The 880 is a formula 1 car

The 990 is a formula 1 car tuned differently that might not make it faster on a lap but it's a hell of a lot more fun to drive.

The 880 is a beer that everyone will like

The 990 is a beer that was brewed to be more refreshing

The 880 is a reference amplifier

The 990 is the same amplifier with different OP/AMP's and the output stage was tweaked to give a better bass response

The 880 is a fine cologne

The 990 is the "Summer" edition

The 880 is a movie

The 990 is the directors cut of that movie.

Do you see what I'm getting at? There is the 'normal' way, and then there is the 'interesting' or 'fun' way. They are incredibly similar, but one strives for accuracy, and the other is tuned for a slightly more musical sound.

I thought I would share my experience dealing with 'Sunil' from Amazon's customer service. You see I have Prime and had paid for overnight shipping. I placed the order Friday morning and as of today it still hadn't shipped. I checked the estimated delivery date, which was originally tomorrow, and now it is March 5th. Naturally I was put out because this was supposed to be an overnight replacement. Amazon's customer service blamed the distributor and said there was nothing they could do. The item is in stock.......nothing they could do......

As much as it pains me, I cancelled my order and I'm sending these, and every purchase I can back to Amazon, straight up returning them and I'm going to try and get my Prime fee refunded since they can't seem to make good on overnight shipping.

It seems like half the things I've ordered from Amazon recently have been defective in some way and getting them was hard to begin with due to their overly slow shipping, which was the whole reason I upgraded to Prime in the first place.

Buyer beware.

I've found the problem and fixed it. I'm 90% sure. I just gave the cable a mighty tug in several directions and no problems encountered. AND I learned something that is going to make the 880 VS 990 comparisons even weirder.

1. The problem appears to be the OFC cable. It is braided, or twisted, and very near to where it exited the cable inside the phone, it had partialy unbraided on the green conductor (left + ) which was causing it to rub against the center ground. OFC has it's own paint like insulation but it is also encased inside of a plastic insulator inside of the cable. Where it exits the cable inside they have stripped back the plastic insulator so that the 1" or so from the cable grommet to the driver, it's bare OFC wire. This shouldn't usually be an issue because of the aformentioned paint like insulation, but when it unwound it must have abraded a bit.

I simply re-positioned the driver so that the tension on the OFC wires would force them apart instead of together.

2. The construction of the wire is more robust than I had feared. There is a thick rubberized plastic grommet where it enters the headphone housing, this takes all of the strain of the weight of the cable and tugging/pulling. However, the coiled cable itself is free to move about a fair amount so that the conductors inside of the cable may sometimes slide inside of the coiled insulation, meaning it is possible to move the cables inside the headphone to a small degree by stretching or twisting the exterior cable.

My conclusion is that you can bomb proof these headphones by applying a little bit of nail polish laquer to the OFC where it might come in contact with other OFC, or  using a little heat shrink tubing, wrapping them in paper, anything to help them insulate from each other.

And the bombshell....I think that the 880 and the 990's differences might be the enclosure and that they may share the same driver.

The 880 has a 1/4" thick felt pad that rides directly on top of the driver enclosure. It sits dead center in the middle of the paper that covers the enclosure.

The 990 has only paper. This is probably why it's top end seems a little more forward than the 880.

The 880 also has some felt like material inside of the exterior housing just underneath the outside grill. It looks like a felt donut that runs around the outside circumference. This likely attenuates the bass frequencies to some degree and leads to the 'semi open' sound and the flatter bass response.

The 990 has no such padding, it's open on the other side of the driver under the grills.

I would have to remove the driver from it's panel in order to be sure, but given the incredible symmetry between 880 and 990 on frequency charts, and their similar sound, I strongly suspect that they are in fact the same driver in different enclosures.

This means that if you add felt to a 990 you can turn it into an 880. If you remove the felt from the 880, you can turn it into a 990.