[xnor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickchen /img/forum/go_quote.gif The bass is better than the one of the HD25-1, you get 90% of its kickbass, but an additional deep bass layer the Senn can't provide.

lol?

 

[irjoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickchen /img/forum/go_quote.gif You've blown BOTH drivers???

Nono, i mean the pieces marked "R" and "L" that holds the drivers to the headband. silly me

I get the grado rattle on my L though, so I sent an email first to Alessandros, whom redirected me to Grado, who then told me i should get in contact w/ Alessandro.

 

[loopfreak]

Quote:

The mids loose approx. 10% of their stock agressiveness when the mod is applied, they just don't scream as much as before. Maybe a bad thing for the hard'n heavy fraction, but definetely more realistic and better sounding for every other genre. The bass is better than the one of the HD25-1, you get 90% of its kickbass, but an additional deep bass layer the Senn can't provide.

Thanks for the info

 

[Amarphael]

I apologize if this been covered before (I did a search) but i'm curious to know why this mod is supposedly not suitable with the RS-1. I performed it on my Classic pair and the result is a substantial improvemnt from stock, with regard to soundstage, which became enormous in widness, instrument seperation and bass quality. I mean, Except the (altered) drivers, the build of the Ms-Pro and RS-1 is supposed to be identical and so the only difference between the two modded should be in tonal balance, no?

 

[nickchen]

I must confess that I personally never had the opportunity to try a "1000ened" RS1, so all I stated here is only knowing from heresay. It was the old Cosmopragma warhorse who had tried that but hated it (ssssh-booom), but he loved the Ulti deeply later.

How do you experience the mids and highs in comparison to the stock RS1?

 

[gknix]

Anyone tried this mod on HF-2...?

 

[nickchen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gknix /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyone tried this mod on HF-2...?

A silverback from the german forum tried this with his HF1 and found the results okay, but not mindblowing. That is some time ago though, he used the old distancers "V.1.0" without drillings and all the other bestiaries to adapt & fine tune the mids and upper midrange.

 

[irjoe]

anyone using blue tack to hold the distancers for their MS-1's?

If so, can i get a tip on how you do that exactly?

thanks

 

[NoXter]

You have to knead the bluetak to some kind of a thin sausage and than you put the result under the distancer. Thats it. Important is not using to much of bluetak, otherwise the height will be changed significant and this has bad effects on sound.

 

[cosmopragma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by irjoe /img/forum/go_quote.gif anyone using blue tack to hold the distancers for their MS-1's? If so, can i get a tip on how you do that exactly?

The search engine is your friend when you don't like to read the whole thread.
Here for instance are a few pics I've commented a few years ago.Allenf did take too much blu tak but besides of that that's the way to utilize the stuff.

 

[kintsaki]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nickchen /img/forum/go_quote.gif I must confess that I personally never had the opportunity to try a "1000ened" RS1, so all I stated here is only knowing from heresay. It was the old Cosmopragma warhorse who had tried that but hated it (ssssh-booom), but he loved the Ulti deeply later. How do you experience the mids and highs in comparison to the stock RS1?

Today I was listening and experimenting with my MS-Pro after some time. I was thrilled with how musical it sounded and spent all day rediscovering my favorite music and trying various modes.

I remember very well how I hated the stock RS-1 when I upgraded to it from the SR-125, 8 years ago and how disappointed I was. It was a lot of boom boom and no detail but there was a rich midrange texture.
I thought that that was the difference between the RS and the SR series so I went out and got the SR-325 only to be disappointed again as the 325 was like the RS-1 with even less treble detail and more shrill highs.
I Later found out that that was more of the difference of the Joe to the John school and that wide tolerances in quality control of the drivers could result in an SR-125 like mine that would challenge the RS-1. This school of thought difference was exploited by the marketing genius of John into the Alessandro line.
Everybody kept talking and writing about the HP's and there was the GS-1 custom made for Germany well that was the old Joe recipe that one day would come back but for the time being it was a boutique or a studio type of product made for Alessandro.

The newer Grado's have improved (325i gold >= my vintage RS-1) but are still not refined as the Alessandro's. I can imagine and completely agree with the Cosmopragma experience but that is either something of the past or due to the wide variations on driver performance. I believe that a "good" current RS-1 would not be a bad experience but it would not be an Alessandro either.

The Alessandro is an extremely refined and detailed driver that somehow retains the sweetly piercing mids of the Grado without sacrificing or compromising any part of the spectrum.

Nic's mode addresses the mechanical impedance matching of the driver to the air, It is like the design of a horn chamber for a speaker and as such it tends to amplify the characteristics of the driver.

Think of the stock phone as the driver and of Nics mode as the horn for the driver.

The parameters to experiment with in the design of the horn are the shape, the size, the material and the ability of the air (sound pressure) to pass from one side to the other or one chamber to the other.

Today I played a Little bit with all. Pads for shape and material, distancers and combinations of them for size paper masking tape between two distancer chambers placed back to back etc. all with interesting results.

For quite sometime I thought that the experimentation with this mode should shift its focus from the ear side to the outer side but today I realized that I was wrong there still is plenty to do with the ear side and in fact this is where some more improvements may be possible

I am sure Nic will continue to experiment with this mode for quite some time to come.

Drive this headphone with a T amp and you will have phenomenal bass deep and tight and fast or drive it with a tube amp and you will get sweetly melting harmonics and overtones in either case both are there but the focus simply shifts from one to the other depending on the amp.

My only complain from this phone is that it cannot play loud enough for me. It is so highly revealing that when driven hard it amplifies the existing flows and exhibits clipping distortion signs which I am not sure whether are the driver itself or the signal. I would say for sure that initially it is the signal. Most estat phones are like that drive them hard and they clip but other than that we should not compare as their mid range is not natural.

As I continue to experiment with Nic's mode I find variations that address the loudness problem. But one must understand that nothing is free and everything is a trade-off that means that you can get louder output but at a slight loss on resolution and detail. Nic has said in the past that the PS-1000 is really a powerful MS-Ultimate but at the expenses of a slight loss in resolution.

 

[nickchen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kintsaki /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am sure Nic will continue to experiment with this mode for quite some time to come.

Well...

...to be honest, I've given up to some extend. I've compared it in its actual "expansion state" with legions of other big balls cans meanwhile, and I personally do find its mids and treble flawless. I would like to have that GS1K or PS1K bass slam at least sometimes, but such a bass can't be exracted out of the MS Pro, the basis is too "audiophile"

I suspect that such a bass would spoil the Ulti's genre bandwidth though...

I do not desire to get them tuned to be more sovereign at high volumes, I find them perfect for low or mid volumes. They are not comparable with the K701 or the HD800 sort of cans, those are typical exemplars of the "wanna play loud" fraction IMO.

 

[akabane@drjackel]

i'm looking a pair of distancer where i can get??

 

[nickchen]

Actually DIY, ApatN or me.

 

[cosmopragma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kintsaki /img/forum/go_quote.gif Drive this headphone with a T amp and you will have phenomenal bass deep and tight and fast or drive it with a tube amp and you will get sweetly melting harmonics and overtones in either case both are there but the focus simply shifts from one to the other depending on the amp.

How do you manage to drive an Alessandro by utilizing a T-amp?
I mean, those bridged Tripath amps are fried by combined ground and are not suited for the relatively high impedance/ high sensitivity either.

Quote:

My only complain from this phone is that it cannot play loud enough for me. It is so highly revealing that when driven hard it amplifies the existing flows and exhibits clipping distortion signs which I am not sure whether are the driver itself or the signal. I would say for sure that initially it is the signal. Most estat phones are like that drive them hard and they clip but other than that we should not compare as their mid range is not natural.

Maybe you are listening way louder than most listeners.
I can't remember the MS-Ultimate distorting noticeably (similar to clipping) at my normal listening level unless the recording itself is crappy, and I do listen quite loud at an average of 80-85 dB (measured some time ago with an SPL meter calibrated to +- 1dB).

Regarding electrostats : My Stax SR-4070 definitely starts to distort heavily only beyond ear bleeding volume.I estimate beyond 110 dB.I can't stand such volume for more than a few seconds anyway.
My other electrostats can't be cranked that far but certainly to levels above 100dB and that's more than enough for most music except some extreme crescendos in classical music but those are too extreme for most headphones and loudspeakers and aren't often mastered that way anyway (given that your average listening level isn't above 85 dB).Even classical music is often slightly compressed in order to avoid such extreme SPL differences within one movement.Vinyl isn't even technically capable of such a dynamic range and the recording has to be compressed or the needle would jump like a kangaroo.

Are you sure what you perceive as distortion similar to clipping isn't actually your hurted ears that clip?