BigMikeBass
New Head-Fier
For what its worth 8 years later... I've done a lot of messing around with dampening material on vintage AKGs and although I've never been trained in this, I can assure with great confidence that the paper dampening us not a dust cover.
The material blocks large amounts of air movement, while allowing small movement to flow freely. The effect I notice is this.. if you block the holes completely with tape, you get increased bass response, but it kills your treble. The opposite is true if you open them up completely, you lose all your bottom, but the top end becomes bright and fast. If you tape it off and poke tiny holes in the tape, you'll discover that each hole adds treble and reduces bass.... theres a point in the middle when they balance and, for whatever reason, the soundstage opens up and the headphones come to life. The material that comes on them when you buy them seems to have very small perforations throughout while simultaniously retaining stiffness... there seems to be a balance between how stuff it needs to be to provide punchy fast bass, and how much it can breathe to let the drivers move fast enough for high end detail... I may be way off base with some of the reasoning here, but that bass/treble relationship is something I'm quite sure of, so the dampening material plays a much bigger role than one might think.
The material blocks large amounts of air movement, while allowing small movement to flow freely. The effect I notice is this.. if you block the holes completely with tape, you get increased bass response, but it kills your treble. The opposite is true if you open them up completely, you lose all your bottom, but the top end becomes bright and fast. If you tape it off and poke tiny holes in the tape, you'll discover that each hole adds treble and reduces bass.... theres a point in the middle when they balance and, for whatever reason, the soundstage opens up and the headphones come to life. The material that comes on them when you buy them seems to have very small perforations throughout while simultaniously retaining stiffness... there seems to be a balance between how stuff it needs to be to provide punchy fast bass, and how much it can breathe to let the drivers move fast enough for high end detail... I may be way off base with some of the reasoning here, but that bass/treble relationship is something I'm quite sure of, so the dampening material plays a much bigger role than one might think.
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