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Alright so after rereading the tutorial a few times and better analyzing the pads themselves, I have a much better understanding of how to do this.
I have a couple of questions though. After you cut the holes on the pad, doesn't covering them with the plastic mounting sort of negate that? Since you're covering the holes you cut anyway? Same thing if you decide to glue the dust screen back.
And lastly I see no sign of the plastic stopper which sits between the pad and the dust screen. Did you remove that too?
Previous to the mod, the pleather pads are a very closed system; by removing the flap and adding holes, sound reverberating inside the opening when you wear the headphones could escape both through the cracks on the side (since the flaps are now gone) and get absorbed into the damping holes. The mounting ring does physically block some of the holes but it's not an airtight block, so sound waves still propagate. I have tried this without the mounting ring and the sound sucks.
You mean the foam insert? Read the fineprint outlined by ** ** in the Preface section of my writeup.
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Really cool mod Jerg. Thanks for the write-up. I can't wait to give this a try myself. Just one question though, it seems like you feel the more holes the better, am I right? If that's the case, couldn't you just enlarge the preexisting holes to allow even more of the inner foam to be exposed? Maybe it would be a bit easier/allow for more damping. Kind of like this crappy drawing...
You COULD of course do that, I'd worry about the longterm longevity of the pads though. You want the foam to be held inside the pad, doing this might over time cause the earpad foam to deform and/or bulge out even.
As long as you add the holes thoroughly, the effects should be just as good as cutting those huge holes.
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I'm going to give this a shot, but I don't like the idea of naked drivers (well, maybe on the road). Does anyone have any suggestions what material I could use instead that would serve as an effective dust shield but be acoustically transparent?
Yes, transplant the velour dust screens
Those are way more transparent than the pleather ones so they'd have less of a change on the sound.
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Oh, a question for Jerg .... didn't you say you have a grill mod on your HE500s? Doesn't this mean my results may not be the same (or even desirable) on my non-grill modded phones?
I answered this earlier, the grill mod's effect on the overall sound is EXTREMELY subtle, compared to the scope of how this earpad mod attenuates the sound. They won't interfere. It's like saying if taking some vitamin C is going to interfere with anabolic steroids.
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Is it really necessary to take the dust protection off the pads? Does it really improve the sound?
Does the same apply to the velour pads?
I've already, very reluctantly, done the grill mod. I don't want to take off another dust protection if i don't need to.
The mod would be useless with the velour pads, since those are already very well (maybe too well) damped, as reverberating sound escapes through the velour fabric naturally. The reason why you don't even want to bother with velour pads is, they don't have the nice dark meaty tonality that the pleathers have, so no matter how you mod it, it won't sound as nice as the pleathers. The pleathers on the other hand can be built upon and the sky's the limit.
Well, i just did the mod.
Had a hard time cutting the pad. It didn't look very pretty.
Is it really neccessary to cut all the holes spaced evenly? Because i'm not sure i did that right. Probably screwed it up.
Cut the holes spaced at least somewhat evenly, doesn't have to be symmetric even, but at least asymmetric even. If a side feels like the holes are less, then either enlarge those holes or squeeze a couple more holes there.
And it is only some 500$