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vloh
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2017
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After doing some easy mods and a lot of listening to my Bosshifi B6 I thought I'd share some of my impression
The stock B6 was a disappointment to me, very bassy with recessed midrange and quite hollow sounding.
I had read about the awful stock pads before ordering my pair but since I've got a good assortment of earpads around that didn't bother me much so the first thing I did when I got them was to change the pads to Alpha Pads. Still the sound was not as good as I had hoped for so I opened up the cups just to find them completely empty. From my experience from other modding projects I know some filling can make a big difference so I added a piece of Dynamat in the cups and put some glass fiber filling in there and put it all together again. With the Alpha Pads the sound was better but still not really great so I did a lot of testing with different amounts of filling in the cups, pads and foam disks in front of the pads and finally I settled on the HM5 pleather pads without any foam disks and have used them this way for a couple of weeks now.
Here's some pictures of the small amount of modifications I've done to get a big amount of better sound back in return:
The changes in sound from the stock to the modded version are slightly reduced bass presence and increased quality, more forward midrange and a much less hollow sounding presentation.
Now I'd describe the sound as fairly well balanced with a good amount of high quality sub bass while the mid bass is much more subdued. The quite low amount of mid bass gives a nice amount of air to the presentation and does also make the whole sound very clean. Midrange is well in line with the other frequencies now and although the mids are not super lush they still feel natural and well presented. The treble is very nice with good extension and no harshness whatsoever.
I'm very impressed with the transparency and resolution in them and soundstage width is very good for a pair of closed headphones while depth is average. There's also a significant amount of air in the presentation. Unfortunately there's also a slight amount of hollowness still presents but this does only show on some rare occasions now and I wouldn't say that it's any worse that on the Brainwavz HM5's.
To my great pleasure I can use my Hifiman cables on the B6 as well and they works perfectly fine with the balanced cable for my HE400i.
Although they're very easy to drive I'd say that they're quite picky with the source due to the hollowness. I like them a lot with my Opus #1 DAP so most of my listening have been done with it.
I'm not really a big fan of closed headphones as I prefer open ones or earphones/IEM's if I don't want to disturb others. That's not to say that I'm not interested in closed cans but rather that it's not where I'm going to spend any larger amounts of money. My favorite closed headphones so far has been the Takstar Pro80 for years now so I thought I'd make a small comparison between them and the B6. My Pro80 does also have HM5 pleather pads on them and I've used the Opus #1 as source when comparing the two.
Build quality in general feels quite sturdy on both and I know for a fact that the Pro80 holds up very well over time since I had them for many years now. Still the wood cups on the B6 makes them both feel and look more premium.
Both are also very comfortable to wear for a long period of time and isolation is equally great on both. The metal arch on top of the headband on the B6 carries a lot of sound into the ear cups though so they're actually only ideal for indoor usage. The same is true for the Pro80 due to their long non-detachable cable (in opposite to the detachable one on the B6).
When it comes to sound I must say that the B6 is an upgrade from my beloved Pro80 on pretty much everything.
Although these two sounds far from identical they still have a fairly similar overall sound signature. Compared to the Pro80 the B6 has deeper and better quality subbass as well as less midbass presence. The midrange is more forward and also feels more liquid and lush while treble is pretty similar with a slightly smoother presentation on the B6. Overall resolution and clarity are better on the B6 and the Pro80 does actually sounds muddy in comparison. The B6 does also have a wider stage while depth and height are fairly similar. The only thing the Pro80 really does better is that they manage to never sound hollow on any source or with any music.
So to sum it up the B6 are my new favorite pair of closed headphones and will probably be so for a long time since I've got my priorities towards other things in my ever growing collection. They do need some easy mods to reach their true potential and I'd have liked a bit more warmth in the mid and upper bass area but for $70 they're still crazy good value imo.
Peter thank you for the great mod write up.
VL
Normally velours are useless on n550. I'm quite sure I get a decent seal so it is something more complex. Wish I had more time to adress the issue and do some modding.
