catscratch
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2004
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Well, it took some time and a bit of tweaking, but I finally got my pair to sound pretty much the way that I wanted to.
At first, I complained about an excessively bright treble and a channel imbalance whereby the left driver would produce more bass than the right. It was suggested that the fit was the culprit and I wasn't getting a good seal. But, try as I might, I couldn't get the damn things to fit right.
But, a few months back I got my hands on some new K240 pads which happen to fit the K340 quite well, and all of a sudden it became much easier to get a proper seal. I also experimented quite a bit with fit and earcup placement, and finally found what works. Now, the treble is still a bit on the bright side, but it isn't painful or overbearing, the bass is back where it belongs, and everything sounds much more tonally balanced.
And what a sound it is!
I've been raised on electrostatic headphones, so I can't really live with any kind of slow impulse response. For that reason, even though I have heard or had some very good dynamic setups (HD600 + Raptor was terrific while I had it on loan), I could never live with the fact that when the music became dense and complex, dynamics started to lose resolution and microdetail in each individual instrument. Leading edges became soft and fuzzy as they clashed with the trailing edges of sounds, the space between instruments was lost, and everything became a blur.
On electrostats, this doesn't happen; when the music gets dense electrostats get their groove on, and never lose sight of each individual instrument no matter what you try to overload them with. I listen to a lot of fast, dense music - death metal, very fast and dense electronica, large-scale symphonic pieces that aren't exactly light or simple (Stravinsky, for instance) - and for much of it, dynamics just couldn't cut it.
At the same time, 'stats had their own flaws. The imaging was more diffuse than it was in dynamic headphones, instruments seemed to come from a general area in space instead of being precisely localized, and because of the limited excursion of electrostatic drivers, there was a noticeable lack of bass slam and limited tactile feedback across the sound spectrum.
In effect, it seemed as if you were looking at a finely rendered three-dimensional hologram rather than a real object standing in front of you. It was nice, but it didn't have that tactile, palpable reality that a good dynamic could produce.
So far, the only headphones that have been able to bridge that gap were balanced-armature canalphones, but they, even at the top end, simply cannot compete with a seriously hi-fi headphone like the SR-404, especially when it is in a well-matched system.
The K340, however, gives me a good bit of both worlds.
The electret tweeter adds a lot of speed and precision to the highs, which in turn makes the transients lightning quick and very precise. Leading edges are crisp while trailing edges still have a nice decay; there is a bit of unnatural sharpness but it isn't overblown.
The dynamic mains driver doesn't suffer from the excursion problmes of the SR-404, so you still have music that has a lot of body and slam. The tactile component is very much there, and you feel as if you could reach out and touch the instruments.
My pair is bass-light, so it's driven with a very warm, mushy sounding amp to give it tonal balance. Overall, you have a somewhat bright sound, but with a good bit of emphasis on the lower midrange, so while the highs illuminate the detail the mids remain lush and warm. Detail is seriously awesome (better than the SR-404, which wasn't the case in a bass-heavy pair I heard) and imaging has none of the diffuse character so typical of electrostatics. Everything is precisely localized in space and images are crisp and specific. The soundstage is a bit smallish, but it manages to pack an awful lot of dimensional information into a small(er) space.
The downsides? The bass doesn't go down very deep, especially compared to the SR-404. There is a sense of missing sub-bass information, especially when you're listening to music that has a lot of sub-bass information that you're familiar with. What bass is there is snappy, tight, and quite impactful, and well balanced with the rest of the frequency spectrum.
The treble is also a bit overeager still, so you have a light lustre and slight sharpness to the sound. However, because the treble is so linear there are no peaks to make it sound harsh, and because the mids are so warm the sharpness doesn't extend to them.
But, here's the catch:
In order to get this kind of a seal, I physically have to hold the earcups in place. If I just let them dangle, the right earcup comes off at the bottom, and all of the bass leaks out; then we're back to square one, with a bright, sharp sound and channel imbalance.
This isn't merely an issue of old elastics; I've done some rubber band therapy and tighened the elastics quite a bit. The right earcup now rests on the ear quite firmly, but still the bass leaks out, and the sound isn't balanced.
I guess it's my big noggin, since some of my friends who've tried the system don't have this issue at all.
So, what I need is more clamping force.
Which brings me to my question: it is possible to fit a different headband mechanism to the K340? Something along the lines of a DT770 headband would do quite well, or maybe even an HD600/HD650 headband for maximum clamping power. This force would have to be applied somewhere to the middle/bottom middle of the earcup, since it is the bottom half of the earcup that has the most issues with staying in place.
I've heard that the two metal bars in the headband actually conduct the signal from earcup to earcup, making headband replacement tricky. But what if we were to re-cable them to dual-entry? Couldn't we ditch the headband then?
I don't have any experience with doing this, besides, this pair sounds so much better than other stock pairs I've sampled, that I'm very reluctant to experiment with it or send it away to someone that doesn't know what they're doing.
These experiences have made be believe that fit is far more important than anything else to these headphones. I don't even think they need driver tweaks per se, if the fit was right they'd be just about perfect for what they are. They already sound better than the SR-404 out of an SRM-007t, which is a fairly formidable system.
All that, for $200, out of a $200 amp. Amazing.
At first, I complained about an excessively bright treble and a channel imbalance whereby the left driver would produce more bass than the right. It was suggested that the fit was the culprit and I wasn't getting a good seal. But, try as I might, I couldn't get the damn things to fit right.
But, a few months back I got my hands on some new K240 pads which happen to fit the K340 quite well, and all of a sudden it became much easier to get a proper seal. I also experimented quite a bit with fit and earcup placement, and finally found what works. Now, the treble is still a bit on the bright side, but it isn't painful or overbearing, the bass is back where it belongs, and everything sounds much more tonally balanced.
And what a sound it is!
I've been raised on electrostatic headphones, so I can't really live with any kind of slow impulse response. For that reason, even though I have heard or had some very good dynamic setups (HD600 + Raptor was terrific while I had it on loan), I could never live with the fact that when the music became dense and complex, dynamics started to lose resolution and microdetail in each individual instrument. Leading edges became soft and fuzzy as they clashed with the trailing edges of sounds, the space between instruments was lost, and everything became a blur.
On electrostats, this doesn't happen; when the music gets dense electrostats get their groove on, and never lose sight of each individual instrument no matter what you try to overload them with. I listen to a lot of fast, dense music - death metal, very fast and dense electronica, large-scale symphonic pieces that aren't exactly light or simple (Stravinsky, for instance) - and for much of it, dynamics just couldn't cut it.
At the same time, 'stats had their own flaws. The imaging was more diffuse than it was in dynamic headphones, instruments seemed to come from a general area in space instead of being precisely localized, and because of the limited excursion of electrostatic drivers, there was a noticeable lack of bass slam and limited tactile feedback across the sound spectrum.
In effect, it seemed as if you were looking at a finely rendered three-dimensional hologram rather than a real object standing in front of you. It was nice, but it didn't have that tactile, palpable reality that a good dynamic could produce.
So far, the only headphones that have been able to bridge that gap were balanced-armature canalphones, but they, even at the top end, simply cannot compete with a seriously hi-fi headphone like the SR-404, especially when it is in a well-matched system.
The K340, however, gives me a good bit of both worlds.
The electret tweeter adds a lot of speed and precision to the highs, which in turn makes the transients lightning quick and very precise. Leading edges are crisp while trailing edges still have a nice decay; there is a bit of unnatural sharpness but it isn't overblown.
The dynamic mains driver doesn't suffer from the excursion problmes of the SR-404, so you still have music that has a lot of body and slam. The tactile component is very much there, and you feel as if you could reach out and touch the instruments.
My pair is bass-light, so it's driven with a very warm, mushy sounding amp to give it tonal balance. Overall, you have a somewhat bright sound, but with a good bit of emphasis on the lower midrange, so while the highs illuminate the detail the mids remain lush and warm. Detail is seriously awesome (better than the SR-404, which wasn't the case in a bass-heavy pair I heard) and imaging has none of the diffuse character so typical of electrostatics. Everything is precisely localized in space and images are crisp and specific. The soundstage is a bit smallish, but it manages to pack an awful lot of dimensional information into a small(er) space.
The downsides? The bass doesn't go down very deep, especially compared to the SR-404. There is a sense of missing sub-bass information, especially when you're listening to music that has a lot of sub-bass information that you're familiar with. What bass is there is snappy, tight, and quite impactful, and well balanced with the rest of the frequency spectrum.
The treble is also a bit overeager still, so you have a light lustre and slight sharpness to the sound. However, because the treble is so linear there are no peaks to make it sound harsh, and because the mids are so warm the sharpness doesn't extend to them.
But, here's the catch:
In order to get this kind of a seal, I physically have to hold the earcups in place. If I just let them dangle, the right earcup comes off at the bottom, and all of the bass leaks out; then we're back to square one, with a bright, sharp sound and channel imbalance.
This isn't merely an issue of old elastics; I've done some rubber band therapy and tighened the elastics quite a bit. The right earcup now rests on the ear quite firmly, but still the bass leaks out, and the sound isn't balanced.
I guess it's my big noggin, since some of my friends who've tried the system don't have this issue at all.
So, what I need is more clamping force.
Which brings me to my question: it is possible to fit a different headband mechanism to the K340? Something along the lines of a DT770 headband would do quite well, or maybe even an HD600/HD650 headband for maximum clamping power. This force would have to be applied somewhere to the middle/bottom middle of the earcup, since it is the bottom half of the earcup that has the most issues with staying in place.
I've heard that the two metal bars in the headband actually conduct the signal from earcup to earcup, making headband replacement tricky. But what if we were to re-cable them to dual-entry? Couldn't we ditch the headband then?
I don't have any experience with doing this, besides, this pair sounds so much better than other stock pairs I've sampled, that I'm very reluctant to experiment with it or send it away to someone that doesn't know what they're doing.
These experiences have made be believe that fit is far more important than anything else to these headphones. I don't even think they need driver tweaks per se, if the fit was right they'd be just about perfect for what they are. They already sound better than the SR-404 out of an SRM-007t, which is a fairly formidable system.
All that, for $200, out of a $200 amp. Amazing.
