An unknown brand that he's been recommending recently :thinking: There might not be anything fishy going on, but it seems very coincidental...

My 11.11 stuff is starting to arrive now. Y'all weren't playing when talking about the bass on these things.

Sure, there's definitely plenty of opportunity to make a good driver sound worse. I've been burned by the Smabat icepick too. Maybe I should have specified that 80% of a good sounding headphone comes from having a good driver. That's not to say that the last 20% doesn't take a lot of work...

The more I get into DIY the more I'm convinced that like 80% of what makes headphones/IEMS/earbuds good is just having decent drivers.

Added! I've added these to the spreadsheet but not the OP as they're all discontinued. Also added the Helm Audio F2, an interesting DD+Planar hybrid from the US.

What drivers do you think work well for closed-backs? I saw you mentioned the K100 in the other thread but I'm hoping you have some cheaper recommendations :sweat_smile:

I'll second these. Definitely not worth $50, but paired with some donut foams it makes for an improvement on the X6.

The FF3 is currently $20 less than the FF3s, does anyone know if it's worth the difference to get the newer one? I'm not bothered about the removable cable since it's proprietary anyway.

I figured that might be the case. I guess that's good news for my wallet haha as I'm definitely not ready to make the next jump up in terms of price. That V12 looks intriguing though, I might keep that one in mind. I'm also eyeing up a Moondrop Para for just over £200 :sweat_smile: In the mean...

Anything in the sale a worthwhile buy for someone with a Timeless looking for warmer, bassier sound while having the same level of technicalities?

delete

Finally assembled the set I've been working on: I limited myself to what I already had on hand in terms of hardware, which was basically this kit, a pair of Peerless 40mm drivers, and various earpads; all of which I ordered last year to mess around with DIY. I picked up some felt and wool for...

Fiio FF1 is half price in the 11.11 sale. I had no real interest in these as I DIY my buds these days but I might pick one up to get as another reference point.

Someone on the earbuds thread posted impressions and it seems like the icepick is indeed gone! Or at least greatly reduced. I've ordered just the body to test with the M4 driver I have and will post impressions when they arrive.

For sure! I've got a pair of 40mm for a compact set I'm designing.

Ah that makes sense! shame you can't buy the gold one separately. I don't quite trust smabat enough to drop $90 (even if it does include all the extras) but $35 is enough to test the waters as it were.

Thanks for taking the plunge! I think the drivers are compatible with the M4 modules so this has swayed me to picking up one of the M5 black body units.

Thanks! Oof, that's a bit much for me right now haha, I'm just dipping my toes into full-size headphone design.

Super interesting and very impressive headphones! The woodworking really elevates his builds and wouldn't look out of place next to some ZMFs or Audezes. I wonder where he got those ADX5000 drivers from, a quick search on google only turns up the full headphone.

I've been looking for days for mono (TS) 2.5mm jacks to no avail. The closest I've come to are these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002852561116.html? if anyone else is interested. Annoyingly I have a pair that came with a DIY kit but the seller won't let me buy them separately.

I tried having a look through Twitter but there's only a couple of impressions from Japanese (I think) users. The gist of it seems to be that there's a good low-end, soundstage seems to be good(?), female vocals are close(?), and resolution might not be the best. Not the best information since...

New Tingker H6 available for ~$50 with store coupon.

I can't find any reviews of this, looks like a brand new IEM with the name of Tingker H6. Tempted to pull the trigger though as Audiosense's/Floaudio's recent releases have been well reviewed and the coupon brings this from ~£127 down to ~£50.

Kinda disappointing they took away the 2-pin connector and went MMCX-only. Sure, having two connector types on the same IEM might be completely unnecessary, but at least it was interesting.

I'd really love some kind of guide akin to Rary's earbud guide for common materials/techniques used to tune headphones.