[DekoniAudio]

Dekoni Audio is pleased to announce a new pad material, exclusive to our new Sony WH-1000XM2 earpads, plus a new type of Pad Product: Dekoni Nuggets!

​

Sony’s WH-1000XM2 is “The Noise-Cancelling Headphone.” Regarded by reviewers in the Industry and the Community as the first travel headphone with levels of active noise cancellation to challenge the reigning Bose Quiet Comfort models for the championship belt, the WH-1000XM2 also have a well-regraded sound quality and are an often recommended travel companion. It was also the most requested headphone for the “Dekoni take” on comfort.

Dekoni preserved what made this Sony great, but made a number of small changes that make a big difference. First of all, there is more room for the ear, with deeper pads and a wider diameter opening. Second, the Dekoni Choice pads have also improved on the travel practicality of the WH-1000XM2 by with about 8dB more passive isolation from noise leaking in or out, while the headphone's microphone array inside and out of the ear cups maintain the same level of Active Noise Cancellation. Those changes already address what people said they wanted from Dekoni, but we didn’t stop there! The Dekoni WH-1000XM2 pads will also be the first to use the new Choice Suede and Choice Leather materials, leading-edge new vegan materials which feel supremely soft, supple, and lightweight in thickness compared to the stock Sony pads. We also used our design experience and measurement devices to inform the accentuated sound: holistically we are proud of the sound presentation of both models, and we were getting great feedback on our prototypes at CanJam RMAF this October!

For people like us who marathon their headphone sessions, these will be great. Buy yours today!
Choice Leather: https://dekoniaudio.com/product/dek...ony-wh1000xm2-dekoni-choice-leather-material/
Choice Suede: https://dekoniaudio.com/product/dek...-sony-wh1000xm2-dekoni-choice-suede-material/

Our separate WH-1000XM3 pads are almost ready, and should be available in the first quarter of 2019.

***
UPDATE!
We created a pad installation video:

[video][/video]

Also, we purchased a pair of MDR-1000X (The predecessor to the WH-1000XM2) to confirm if our pads would fit the older model too – the day before they were delivered, we got a message confirming the pads are cross compatible. We confirmed it anyway, but good news for those owing the older model! Again, our WH-1000XM3 pads are actually a different size and [strikethrough]will be releasedvery soon[/strikethrough] are available now!.
***

***Link to original announcement post***

sales@dekoniaudio.com | dekoniaudio.com | facebook.com/dekoniaudio | instagram: @dekoniaudio.com​

 

[DekoniAudio]

@DekoniAudio Would be interested if you guys can make pads like Audeze Vegan, and see how it results on planars. As we know Audeze stopped production of their vegan pads, and there demand for them.

Thanks for the request @SilverEars, we're actually planning to post measurements about our recently expanded line of Audeze pads next week! So, perfect timing

 

[DekoniAudio]

Dekoni Audio is pleased to share a “deep dive” look into our Focal line of Earpads, specifically tuned to elevate your listening experience.

We start with comfort, using our soft, high density, slow rebound memory foam for an extra plush experience that conforms to the shape of your face (and accommodates glasses stems). Like all our earpads, they are offered in a wide range of fabric options, including premium Sheepskin, Fenestrated Sheepskin, Elite Velour, and our Hybrid pads. We also ensured the pads mount just as securely as the stock pads. Finally, we shaped and measured the pads to tune the sound and share a preview of how they sound compared to stock pads.

In our measurements, we aren’t using compensation except to cancel out the ear response of our microphone dummy head. We have been fortunate to have acquired a certain Audio Precision-based measurement rig, and will continue to keep the measurements coming! Some measurements by others are made with adjustments to reflect the effect that the shape of a generic inner and outer ear will have on the sound waves – we don’t do that, because as every experienced audio enthusiast knows, we all have different ears! So, as part of a series of Dekoni Describes posts, we will walk our readers through understanding our graphs.

The first thing to understand about an uncompensated graph is that it will sound different to the listener than the graph will show. For one, we haven’t smoothed our graphs, so there are many peaks and valleys that would have been lost information, but also there are other factors, such as our extra sensitivity to vocals, and that the shape of our ears and depth of our ear canals can actually amplify certain frequencies. For the purposes of swapping earpads, it is enough to say that a flat line along the 0 dB line wouldn’t sound “good,” and mainly we want to focus on how a Dekoni pad compares to the Stock pad. With our measurements, we went straight to the top model, the Focal Utopia, which comes Stock with Fenestrated Lambskin.

We use supple, natural Sheepskin that is the softest and most breathable available today, available in solid or Fenestrated (French for “windowed,” it has little holes in it). With our solid Sheepskin, overall we see a similar shape and only up to a 6 dB deviation from stock, with a small lift in sub bass quantity and the biggest quantity reductions of around the 2 kHz and 7.5 kHz range.

Our Fenestrated Sheepskin is the closest to stock sound, and overall each pad follows a similar shape as the stock pad, though there is a small lift in sub bass response and no spike at the 6 kHz range, a pitch that can add energy but sometimes trigger sibilants for some people with shorter ear canals.

Our Elite Velour is closer to alcantara in feel than typical velour pads, soft and breathable but as you can see there is no loss of foundational bass (in fact it traces very similar to the Sheepskin pads) and has a smaller quantity reduction at 7 kHz than the other pads, contrary to most velours which lose low end and high end pitch quantity that leave a bare the midrange.

Finally, our Hybrid pads, which are sealed with solid Sheepskin on the outside face, neutral Fenestrated Sheepskin on the inner face, and comfortable with Velour on the face facing your face, measure with less low midrange at 1 kHz and the most energy at 5 kHz, but again overall a similar frequency curve shape as the stock pads.


The subjective factor of experiencing headphones and earpads matters the most, of course. If it sounds good, it is good! We do listen with our pads for several revisions before release, and we want to thank reviewers and our patrons on Head-Fi (such as @gLer!) and other platforms who have shared their experiences. Real user experience is the best judge, and we thank everyone who has tried to describe their experience!


Our Focal pads fit the Utopia, Clear, Clear Pro, Elear, Elex, Elegia, and Stellia headphones, and are available now at our fine dealers internationally and directly at dekoniaudio.com.

sales@dekoniaudio.com | dekoniaudio.com | facebook.com/dekoniaudio | instagram: @dekoniaudio.com​

 

[Headphones and Coffee]

I would love to see more cloth pads on the market velour is comfortable but is a pain to keep clean when you have a cat.

 

[DekoniAudio]

Dekoni Audio is pleased to share a “deep dive” look into our Audeze LCD line of Earpads, specifically tuned to elevate your listening experience.

We start with comfort, using our soft, high density, slow rebound memory foam for an extra plush experience that conforms to the shape of your face (and accommodates glasses stems). Like all our earpads, they are offered in a wide range of fabric options, including Elite Sheepskin, Elite Fenestrated Sheepskin, Elite Velour, and our Elite Hybrid pads. We also have LCD available in Choice Leather and Choice Suede. We ensured the pads mount just as securely as the stock pads. Finally, we shaped and measured the pads to tune the sound and share a preview of how they sound compared to stock pads.

In our measurements, we aren’t using compensation except to cancel out the ear response of our microphone dummy head. We have been fortunate to have acquired a certain well-known Audio Precision-based measurement rig, and will continue to keep the measurements coming! Some measurements by others are made with adjustments to reflect the effect that the shape of a generic inner and outer ear will have on the sound waves – we don’t do that, because as every experienced audio enthusiast knows, we all have different ears! So, as part of a series of Dekoni Describes posts, we will walk our readers through understanding our graphs.

Click or tap to view full-sized graphs:

The first thing to understand about an uncompensated graph is that it will sound different to the listener than the graph will show. For one, we haven’t smoothed our graphs, so there are many peaks and valleys that would have been lost information, but also there are other factors, such as the human’s extra sensitivity to vocals, and that the shape of our ears and depth of our ear canals can actually amplify certain frequencies. For the purposes of swapping earpads, it is enough to say that a flat line along the 0 dB line wouldn’t sound “good” on these uncompensated graphs, and mainly we want to focus on how a Dekoni pad compares to the Stock pad. With our measurements, we used the well-loved LCD 2 (with Fazor), which comes Stock with Audeze’s Sheepskin.


We use supple, natural Sheepskin that is the softest and most breathable available today, available in solid or Fenestrated (French for “windowed,” it has little holes in it). With our solid Sheepskin, overall we see a similar shaped frequency response and only up to a 5 dB deviation from stock, where the biggest change is a smoother transition between bass and mids around the 2 kHz range. Keep in mind the little “bowl” in the midrange between 1kHz and 5 kHz is normal, because without it, vocals would sound “shouty” and louder than the extended frequencies!

Our Fenestrated Sheepskin is also similar in shape to the stock pad, though the transition from bass to mids is a bit more abrupt while transitioning to the highs is more gradual, and a good choice in this situation for anyone who felt like the treble could use just a bit more amplitude. Fenestrations are also airy in that they allow some more heat to escape through the pads.


Our Elite Velour has a higher thread count and tighter weave than typical velour pads, soft and breathable but as you can see there is no loss of foundational bass – in fact it traces very similar to the Fenestrated Sheepskin pads on this headphone, with just a bit less energy in the lower mids. In fact, this is a great opportunity to choose based on your comfort preference for cloth or leather, contrary to most velours which lose low end and high end pitch quantity that leave a bare the midrange.

Our Hybrid pads, which are sealed with solid Sheepskin on the outside face, neutral Fenestrated Sheepskin on the inner face, and comfortable with Velour on the face facing your face, measure with more amplitude and linearity in the midrange, and a smaller contrast between the 4kHz and 6 kHz valleys and peaks than stock, but again overall a similar frequency curve shape as the stock pads.


Finally, our new Choice Leather and Choice Suede pads that have been making waves on the forums lately, trace a very similar signature to each other (which is also very close to the Sheepskin). That’s because they’re all sealed pads, though it should be noted that the Choice Suede noticeably lacks a treble peak around 9 kHz.

The subjective factor of experiencing headphones and earpads matters the most, of course. If it sounds good, it is good! We listen with our pads for several revisions before release, and we want to thank the reviewers and our patrons on Head-Fi and other platforms who have shared their experiences. Real user experience is the best judge, and we thank everyone who has tried to describe their experience!


Our Audeze pads adhere to the whole LCD audiophile and gaming line (make sure to use the LCD4’s mounting ring! Not compatible with in-ears and Möbius), also work with the the Monoprice Monolith 1060, and are available now at our fine dealers internationally and dekoniaudio.com.

sales@dekoniaudio.com | dekoniaudio.com | facebook.com/dekoniaudio | instagram: @dekoniaudio.com​

 

[DekoniAudio]

I would love to see more cloth pads on the market velour is comfortable but is a pain to keep clean when you have a cat.

One tip is to use a bit of gaffer's tape as a "lint" roller, the adhesive is gentle enough to not damage the pad but pull off pet hair

 

[thefitz]

Thrilled to see this! I need new pads on my LCD-3F. How hard is it to pad roll? I am debating between sheepskin and choice suede.

 

[DekoniAudio]

Thrilled to see this! I need new pads on my LCD-3F. How hard is it to pad roll? I am debating between sheepskin and choice suede.

We have an instructional video on YouTube!


Part of a whole pad-swap demo playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhwEVXEi4b_p9cqrU_oJZeRtf178Hm79B

 

[Headphones and Coffee]

One tip is to use a bit of gaffer's tape as a "lint" roller, the adhesive is gentle enough to not damage the pad but pull off pet hair

Works great thanks for the tip, I was worrying that maybe the stickiness would harm the velour but it works great thank you.

 

[DekoniAudio]

 

[DekoniAudio]

Dekoni Audio is pleased to share a “deep dive” look into our AKG K701 line of Earpads, specifically tuned to elevate your listening experience.

We start with comfort, using our soft, high density, slow rebound memory foam for an extra plush experience that conforms to the shape of your face (and accommodates glasses stems). Like all our earpads, they are offered in a wide range of fabric options, including Elite Sheepskin, Elite Fenestrated Sheepskin, Elite Velour, and our Elite Hybrid pads. We also have K701 pads available in Protein Leather. We ensured the pads mount just as securely as the stock pads. Finally, we shaped and measured the pads to tune the sound and share a preview of how they sound compared to stock pads.

In our measurements, we aren’t using compensation except to cancel out the ear response of our microphone dummy head. We have been fortunate to have acquired a certain well-known Audio Precision-based measurement rig, and will continue to keep the measurements coming! Some measurements by others are made with adjustments to reflect the effect that the shape of a generic inner and outer ear will have on the sound waves – we don’t do that, because as every experienced audio enthusiast knows, we all have different ears! So, as part of a series of Dekoni Describes posts, we will walk our readers through understanding our graphs

The first thing to understand about an uncompensated graph is that it will sound different to the listener than the graph will show. For one, we haven’t smoothed our graphs, so there are many peaks and valleys that would have been lost information, but also there are other factors, such as the human’s extra sensitivity to vocals, and that the shape of our ears and depth of our ear canals can actually amplify certain frequencies. For the purposes of swapping earpads, it is enough to say that a flat line along the 0 dB line wouldn’t sound “good” on these uncompensated graphs, a dip in the midrange is to be expected since human ears are more sensitive to that region, and mainly we want to focus on how a Dekoni pad compares to the Stock pad. With our measurements, we used the well-known K701, which comes Stock with AKG’s Velour.

We use supple, natural Sheepskin that is the softest and most breathable available today, available in solid or Fenestrated. With our solid Sheepskin, overall we see the largest deviation from the open stock AKG Velour, where the listening experience will feel like more bass, and overall a stronger v-shaped sound. Keep in mind the dip in the midrange, especially between 2kHz and 6 kHz is to be expected in an uncompensated graph, because of our sensitivity to vocals and the midrange in general, but this will still be a v-shaped sound with emphasis on treble and bass!

Our Fenestrated (French for “windowed,” it has little holes in it) Sheepskin is almost audibly indistinguishable from the stock pad, except for the leather texture and the slightly better bass extension as the frequency drops. Fenestrations are also airy in that they allow some more heat to escape through the pads.

Our Elite Velour has a higher thread count and tighter weave than typical velour pads, soft and breathable but as you can see there is no loss of foundational bass – in fact it traces very similar to the Fenestrated Sheepskin pads on this headphone, and the stock pads (less than 2 dB). In fact, this is a great opportunity to choose based on your comfort preference for cloth or leather.

Our Hybrid pads, which are sealed with solid Sheepskin on the outside face, neutral Fenestrated Sheepskin on the inner face, and comfortable with Velour on the face facing your face, measure with less amplitude and more linearity in the midrange than stock, less treble amplitude, and an elevated bass response and extension. Overall, this results in a smoother sound with boosted bass.

Finally, our Protein Leather pads trace a very similar signature to the Sheepskin. That’s because they’re all sealed pads, though it should be noted that the Protein Leather has further bass emphasis and extension for an even more exciting v-shaped sound. Because Protein leather manufactured from eggshell protein instead of procured from animal hide, it has a more even grain structure, and it’s thinner to contain less heat.

The subjective factor of experiencing headphones and earpads matters the most, of course. If it sounds good, it is good! We listen with our pads for several revisions before release, and we want to thank the reviewers and our patrons on Head-Fi and other platforms who have shared their experiences. Real user experience is the best judge, and we thank everyone who has tried to describe their experience!


Our AKG pads are available now at our fine dealers internationally, and dekoniaudio.com.

sales@dekoniaudio.com | dekoniaudio.com | facebook.com/dekoniaudio | instagram: @dekoniaudio.com​

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Velour and sheepskin look like the winners. If I still had a K701, I'd jump on that velour asap. A shame hybrid alters the sound so massively. I personally like pads to retain most of the default sound. But looks like a basshead's dream.

 

[XERO1]

Could you please do a comprehensive measurement comparison between all of your pads (both with and without the Attenuation rings) for the Massdrop TH-X00 next?

That would be awesome!

 

[DekoniAudio]

Could you please do a comprehensive measurement comparison between all of your pads (both with and without the Attenuation rings) for the Massdrop TH-X00 next?

That would be awesome!

We're actually very far along with this (and recently made a pad swap demo video of the Massdrop TH-X00), we just need to locate a fresh pair of stock TH-X00 pads to compare against.

 

[MrPanda]

I'm really curious about the fenestrated sheepskin pads - they sound great on HD650's, and jeepers, you can't beat them for comfort.