[cskippy]

There are some good open planars for that plus something like the TH-X00 or variants do very well while maintaining a good frequency response.

 

[ratboi]

That is good advice, thank you. I will listen more quietly. I turned things up to near maximum volume loud to listen to the frequency sweep. It may simply be that at the extreme listening levels required to hear sub bass, dynamic headphones distort, bloating the sub bass, making it sound much louder than it is. I have to admit, it does sound good and I wish the ESP950 had as much slam at 30hz as other headphones do. For some genres relying on sub bass, it is indeed anemic.

Surely there must be a DSP somewhere that can inject some 1st and 2nd order harmonics into a signal path in a manageable way - limit it to the low freqs, and voila!, you've got thump. Kinda the way tubes do, only we choose which frequencies the distortion is applied to... 8-Þ

 

[cskippy]

It's called a harmonic exciter. There are plugins that do this and they work well.

 

[ratboi]

It's called a harmonic exciter. There are plugins that do this and they work well.

Despite the easily seen comments that they are most often used for higher frequencies (modelling tubes?), there are definitely plugins out there that focus on lower frequencies, and particularly of interest to me some for foobar2k! Great idea, thanks much. Looks like I've got some playing to do. Admittedly, I'm not one of the ones clamoring for the distortion - EQ has been sufficient to this point, a 30 band plugin doing the work. Still, can't test a hypothesis without the tools, right?

Right now, I'm just having fun listening to stuff I missed along the way. OMG, Martin Barre playing, and Ian Anderson singing, like Mark Knopfler? What?? More than the crest of a Knave; oh, I'm definitely not the first to notice. Ian, what WERE you thinking?? post throat surgery; that was when. ok...

 

[arjuna93]

I am considering letting mine go around the 400$ price mark, depending on location. I will post a classified tomorrow, but wanted to leave a heads up here in case there were some interesting parties. I have both a 120V as well as 240V compatible transformer, so it can go to anyone. The Vesper pads would be at an extra... Cheers!

Hi, I'm probably interested, if you can ship to Taiwan.

 

[conquerator2]

Hi, I'm probably interested, if you can ship to Taiwan.

I do :] Feel free to PM me :]

 

[Policar]

This is interesting to me. I'd definitely be curious to try one of those plug ins targeting the bass. The rest sounds great already.

I do find the Koss sounds a lot fuller (without any real loss of detail) when driven with a tube pre-amp. Beautiful sounding.

 

[ratboi]

This is interesting to me. I'd definitely be curious to try one of those plug ins targeting the bass. The rest sounds great already.

I do find the Koss sounds a lot fuller (without any real loss of detail) when driven with a tube pre-amp. Beautiful sounding.

Not so many bass 'harmonic exciter' DSP as first impression from the google search. Still, I found one that I managed to get plugged into foobar2000, and it is interesting. Was hard to find a live link. Not on the official link list. foo_dsp_bassexciter. set to recommended. Allmans Live at Fillmore definitely bass weak on these phones straight up. With the help of the foo_dsp_xgeq EQ not so weak, but not really thumpy. Turned off the EQ, turned on BassExciter. With it, a definite improvement. Maybe not total thumpdom, but might be better with more tweaking. Together might be painful; hmmm... I musta did somebody wrong!!

The package comes with both a foobar and a Winamp plugin. Long time since I whipped the Llama's ass; pretty sure it works on a Mac without having to Wine, or whatever.

FWIW, forgive the tube cracks - so to speak. Just jealous, really. So many excessively dry recordings, a little sweetening just can't be a bad thing. And, these phones? Beautiful sounding regardless. Lord have mercy on me; oh my oh my... Seriously love these ear muffs.

 

[Allanmarcus]

I've tried a number of free tube plugins with iTunes, Sound Siphon, and AU Labs. It was a little bit of work to set up (see link in my signature), and sort of worked OK. Best I've found is a real tube preamp. Get a Saga. I now have a Mjolnir 2 and I used the pre-out into the E/90 and I'm very happy with the results.

 

[ratboi]

I've tried a number of free tube plugins with iTunes, Sound Siphon, and AU Labs. It was a little bit of work to set up (see link in my signature), and sort of worked OK. Best I've found is a real tube preamp. Get a Saga. I now have a Mjolnir 2 and I used the pre-out into the E/90 and I'm very happy with the results.

Saga not a bad idea, but does it do anything for the missing thump? If I was a MacHead your setup looks pretty cool, but still wondering what you might include that works as the 'harmonic exciter' for the bass.

 

[Allanmarcus]

Saga not a bad idea, but does it do anything for the missing thump? If I was a MacHead your setup looks pretty cool, but still wondering what you might include that works as the 'harmonic exciter' for the bass.

Sorry, I thought you mentioned Mac in your prior post.

At any rate, I wood just use basic EQ if you want more bass. Add bass, then lower the master volume in the EQ to avoid clipping. Then turn up the volume on the amp.

Bottom line, the 950 isn't for bass thump. Get a Fostex TH 610 of TH900 for TOTL sound and bass thump.

 

[ratboi]

Sorry, I thought you mentioned Mac in your prior post.

At any rate, I wood just use basic EQ if you want more bass. Add bass, then lower the master volume in the EQ to avoid clipping. Then turn up the volume on the amp.

Bottom line, the 950 isn't for bass thump. Get a Fostex TH 610 of TH900 for TOTL sound and bass thump.

Already did the EQ thing, the plugins can automatically handle the potential for clipping, I've let them do their thing. OK, but obviously not the same as a sealed back phone. To be clear, there is no way I'm going back to a dynamic driver from electrostatic; too little to gain, too much to lose. I'm not able to spend what a Utopia demands. Was just looking for a way to bring these closer, as are others.

Harmonics are responsible for at least some of the thump in some closed back phones, so with the prompt from cskippy I went and found at least one dsp that works with foobar2000 and winamp. Am hoping others will give it - or something like it - a try and see if they find the approach as interesting as I have so far. I'm pretty happy with the results BassExciter has given. Combined with the EQ, and a bit of volume, live rock and roll sounds pretty darn convincing to me now. Certainly, closer than it ever did before.

 

[ratboi]

This is interesting to me. I'd definitely be curious to try one of those plug ins targeting the bass. The rest sounds great already.

I do find the Koss sounds a lot fuller (without any real loss of detail) when driven with a tube pre-amp. Beautiful sounding.

Just want you to know that I think you'll find the BassExciter plugin/dsp interesting. I wanted a foobar2000 plugin, it works there, but if you can't/don't use it, it works with Winamp too. Not the same as a Grado or those Beyer 1350, I'm sure, but wondering if it can close the gap somewhat for you. Curious...

 

[cskippy]

Glad a bass harmonic exciter worked for you. I primarily use the with mixing in DAWs but if your playback software supports VSTs then they'll work there too.

Here are some others using a quick search. I've only used the Maxxbass by Waves, but the others look interesting too, particularly LF Max Punch.

http://nickfever.com/music/blog/2015/bass-enhancer-vst-or-maxxbass-alternative

 

[Allanmarcus]

Already did the EQ thing, the plugins can automatically handle the potential for clipping, I've let them do their thing. OK, but obviously not the same as a sealed back phone. To be clear, there is no way I'm going back to a dynamic driver from electrostatic; too little to gain, too much to lose. I'm not able to spend what a Utopia demands. Was just looking for a way to bring these closer, as are others.

Harmonics are responsible for at least some of the thump in some closed back phones, so with the prompt from cskippy I went and found at least one dsp that works with foobar2000 and winamp. Am hoping others will give it - or something like it - a try and see if they find the approach as interesting as I have so far. I'm pretty happy with the results BassExciter has given. Combined with the EQ, and a bit of volume, live rock and roll sounds pretty darn convincing to me now. Certainly, closer than it ever did before.

I have a Utopia, a Mjolnir 2, and a bimby. I also have a TH900 (plus others). I'm really torn between the TH900 and the Utopia. For me, the TH900, with the Mj2 and some good tubes, may be my end game. I like the ESP950, and I listened to a really high end Stax set up recently (007, 009, blue hawaii), and while I prefer stats for classical and jazz, I prefer dynamics for rock and pop. Note, the ESP950 with a Stax adapter and the Blue Hawaii sounded great!

I guess what I'm saying is it depends on what you listen to. You can try to charge the sound with plugins, but if you really like thump for some genres and airiness for others, you might just need to suck it up and have two headphone rigs.