[rembrant]

I have searched many times for some one who has made a set, but there seems to be little information available.

I have this crazy idea of snagging up one of those sets of hearing protectors from walmart and doing some experimentation.

I don't see why one wouldn't be able to make a set of phones that could rival even the most expensive sets available with the right components.

Any suggestions on type what type of drivers I should use?

I see this.
Search Results Page
Those just look like PC speakers to me. Seems to me that they would sound like a tin can.
Fs of 300+ Hz can't be good. Then again I have never made a set of headphones before and most sets have even smaller speakers. So I suppose there is a way to overcome that or that it doesn't matter for the listening levels we are talking about. Has anyone seriously tried this before?

 

[pabbi1]

Well, getting good drivers is the first challenge, and mounting them in those type housings will be difficult. Unless you want to spend real money (my current HP 'project' is at $600 and counting), it would be far easier just to buy what is being produced.

 

[rembrant]

I picked up a set of those hearing protection muffs pretty cheap at walmart yesterday. I have found what sounds to me like a nice driver in an old set of polk audio computer speakers that came with a HP computer I have here. It's good to have a bunch of crap laying around, even if the wife hates it.

I tested the drivers with a sweeping tone through my head amp. They have no problems from about 30Hz-600Hz or so but they start to roll off pretty badly around 1k. They have lots of mid, probably too much. The testing method I used wasn't terribly scientific though. I didn't remove them from the enclosure they are in. I just put them up to my ears. It will be interesting to see how the sound changes when I add some resistance. I'm thinking of using a set of earbuds as highs in series. That should attenuate the signal some and allow me to turn up the volume on my PSP.(the only decent DAC I have right now) My amp has no volume control so I haven't determined what more resistance will do just yet. It should be much easier on my amp though. At near full volume, when used as speakers, they brighten up quite a bit, but my op amps get quite hot. I bet, once removed from the enclosure, the drivers will even up some more as well. This is going to be an interesting experiment. Will it sound better than my Sennheiser eH 150's? Maybe. But that is gonna be a hard act to follow. I don't know if any of you have tried them but they are nearly perfect to me.

We shall see how it goes. Wish me luck with my FrankenPhones.

 

[Punnisher]

Here is a link to a driver I'm thinking about trying.

25CE500-RO

It's one of the only drivers on Mouser with a decent frequency response. You'll need a pretty beastly heaadphone amp to do them any justice though.

I don't know what they sound like, but they are cheap enough to take a risk.

You should check out my thread here, you will find some useful discussion about drivers.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/diy...1-15-a-378233/

 

[rembrant]

I was looking at those Punisher. They may indeed work very well. I tend to like a warm tone to my music and a headphone with a closed back. I have tried similar experiments with an old set of Sony DSP's a while back. I used the KOSS titanium drivers. To me they just had way too much brightness and very little low end. I think you will find that the enclosure make quite a difference. The best thing you can do is just free air the drivers up to your ears and run a sweep tone and see if it is too your liking. A little SPL never hurt anyone and headphone transducers don't move very far.

I got this very same PC some years ago for free from someone who didn't know how to fix it and the speakers that are pictured are the ones that came with it.

http://www.smartcomputing.com/images...e/00529741.jpg

The drivers in these things are full range offering for sure. They can only be driven by the HP computer they came with or my amp. My Sound card doesn't have enough power to drive them very loud at all. I'd say the speaker is slightly less than 2 inches in diameter and they have a square metal surround for mounting. They are quite rich and full in the current boxed configuration. The enclosure is ported at the back with around a 3/8" to 1/2" port. My amp is only just able to drive an 8Ohm load, and it seams to have no issue getting near 500mw or so to these speakers. They get to a nice listening volume before the amp begins to break up. I would say nearly full volume on my PSP volume control. I have listened to them with my amp for hours on end and It does get warm but not too hot. I have used them in the past to drain my AMP battery because it is very large and headphones don't load them at all. It uses a ni-cad pack that is 9.6v and 1000mah. Most of the time the voltage is around 10.3v on this pack. I have feeling that if had built a C-Moy and not a Headbanger that I would certainly have to use some type of transducer.