[Konstantin690]

I use REW with my Umik-1 and a support with false ear in silicone.
I don't know how much confidence I have with it, but I was thinking if measures were repetably, I could see the difference when I modified a parameter.

The deep à 4kHz is due to the silicone ear. I removed it to have a plane surface.

And that's the distortion with the velvet behind the driver:

And without the velvet:

But my biggest mistake was to do modifications without listening them between each.

The balance is not the same...

Flat surface measurement looks better but your results are still way off.
The sharp peak at ~4kHz following by a deep almost one octave higher is an indication of a resonance somewhere in your measurement setup (hardware or/and high crosstalk) and shouldn't be there.

I know that people open holes on the back of OEM Grado drivers just because it's what Grado do on their more expensive headphones in the hopes of an "improvement", but guys, again, do not open holes on the back of the R1 driver, it isn't needed, it won't "improve" anything and you will end up ruining a damn good driver.

 

[DavidA]

Flat surface measurement looks better but your results are still way off.
The sharp peak at ~4kHz following by a deep almost one octave higher is an indication of a resonance somewhere in your measurement setup (hardware or/and high crosstalk) and shouldn't be there.

I know that people open holes on the back of OEM Grado drivers just because it's what Grado do on their more expensive headphones in the hopes of an "improvement", but guys, again, do not open holes on the back of the R1 driver, it isn't needed, it won't "improve" anything and you will end up ruining a damn good driver.

Do you think this might be the case with the G1 driver along with other tweaks?

 

[Konstantin690]

Do you think this might be the case with the G1 driver along with other tweaks?

I won't speculate, but from what I can get from the specs the G1 has CCAW coil and the R1 Copper coil, and maybe stronger magnet?
Whatever's the case, I'm sure a driver can be designed with less or more damping, open back or closed back, I'm just not so naive thinking that I can turn one into another just by opening or blocking the drivers back, I wish it was that simple.

Edit:
Thinking it a bit further, I don't really understand your concern, it's common practice in the loudspeaker driver industry to use common parts for different drivers.
One example that pops in mind is the famous ScanSpeak 18W85xx mid-bass, that alone has 5 different variants suitable for different applications, so I don't see why a headphone driver should be any different.

 

[DavidA]

Not a concern but was just curious, I'll find out in a week or 2 when I get the G1 about the vent ports and post back here

 

[Konstantin690]

Not a concern but was just curious, I'll find out in a week or 2 when I get the G1 about the vent ports and post back here

I don't mean to throw poop on your curiosity so please bear with me, IMO, with a visual inspection you will find out absolutely nothing about the inner workings of a driver and how it compares to another, there's only a couple of things that an eye can see and then there's...... suspension compliance, diaphragm material, diaphragm weight, voice coil formers, voice coil wire material, pole piece geometry, magnetic flux density, assembly moving mass, damping, etc, and their relationship between all the above parameters, how to balance them for different applications is both science and "black art" mastered by driver designers/engineers.

Here's a fine example of what I mean from Sebastian Rodens from Dynaudio Pro. (I can only imagine what he heard/read so that he has to make things perfectly clear )

Scroll down to 3:35....

 

[i-am-iron-man]

Some time ago I picked up a Denon AH-D5000 for spares - it had been modified with an awful lot of Dynamat, and one of the drivers had been killed by a soldering iron.
I didn't think there was a chance I could use the capsules but resisted the temptation to bin them. Then I noticed the Audeze-style builds using Elleven drivers appearing in this thread ...

Here's what I've got so far:
I've managed to clean every single bit of Dynamat from the capsules. I really should have taken a 'before' photo before I started - it wasn't the nicest job and was even in the screw threads. For anyone else with a similar problem I found that surgical spirit came in very useful, and also helped me break the adhesive used to bond the original drivers into the plastic rings.
I also had some aluminium tube left over from a pair of inner sleeves for a set of wooden Grado cups (where I'd again resisted throwing them away...). I shortened those and bonded them into the plastic rings with epoxy.

Next to the driver capsules are a pair of mahogany cups from a pair of Massdrop / Fostex TX-00 headphones. The lacquer has been stripped and the centres removed on a lathe. They were finished off with some mesh and Danish Oil. The other cups have also been stripped and re-finished with Danish Oil.

So that's that - I can re-build the Denons with a 40mm driver as either (semi) closed or open-backed.

I ran out of steam having owned Magnum 5, 6 and 7, Nhoord Red, the original Ypsilon and the S2 - that said, I'm really interested in the Epsilon G1 since I use my Elleven drivers with G cushions. So my S2's might be good candidates to drop into these headphones.

 

[i-am-iron-man]

... and here's what I'm listening to now:

 

[DavidA]

@i-am-iron-man, very creative build, which cups do you like better, the open TH-X00 cups or the closed Denon?

 

[DavidA]

Came in the mail today, haven't installed them yet, hope to get to them in a few days:

Only thing that looks different from visual inspection is the 3 open vent holes

 

[ThunderBolt03]

I also received my G1

 

[i-am-iron-man]

@i-am-iron-man, very creative build, which cups do you like better, the open TH-X00 cups or the closed Denon?

I wasn't expecting it to pan out like this (otherwise I wouldn't have put so much effort into the open cups ...) but (to my ears) they are doing better closed-back.
The closed cups aren't Denon, they are eBay jobbies - they are bigger / more internal volume.

I'm not keen on subjective observations on sound quality, but I have spent some time comparing them to my main set of headphones, a pair of Fostex TH900 with Lawton cups.
The TH900 is the better headphone, where everything sounds much more clearly defined in comparison to the homebrew cans. That said, I've been choosing the S2 headphones over the Fostex because they sound great. Whilst they have more bass quantity than quality compared to the TH900, it makes them sound very dark and certain types of music sound brilliant through them as a result. By comparison the TH900 seems more clinical and sometimes less enjoyable.
With the open back cups they sounded 'bigger', but I don't know if what I was hearing was just more diffuse rather than an improvement. Think about when you cast a shadow, and when the light moves the shadow gets bigger but gets out of proportion - that's the only way I can describe it.
I need to decide what I'm doing with them next. I had swapped the ear pads and Lawton cups from the TH900 with the S2 mods for a while and it clearly improved them. I don't know if my pockets are deep enough to spring for another set of those Lawton cups and I'd end up with two pairs of very like headphones (although that never stopped me before with Grado-style builds...)

I've also ordered the G1 btw. I'll post photos of the build once its done. I'm using Elleven's GS-style cups with G cushions, those rod blocks and gimbals Martin used to do before he vanished, and a really nice cable I made.

 

[wormsdriver]

Hey guys, I'm looking for a pair of standard grado rod blocks, does anybody have some they are not using??? Let me know, I need a pair!

 

[i-am-iron-man]

Got my G1's running. Happy to confirm they are [another] excellent-sounding Elleven driver. I've run them in for around 24hrs and they sound very convincing in G cushions.

Had a bit of a disaster though! - I was in too much of a hurry to give them a listen and fitted them before I finished the cable. I'd been a bit fussy over Y-splitter options and left it off, thinking I'd go back and do it later. However, when I popped the G1 in it immediately became apparent that this was not going to happen - where I usually have to use some electrical tape to get the driver to fit, these are a much tighter fit in the cup. My usual way of pushing the driver back out through the grille at the back ain't working, they feel solid.

I'll have another try later - I often roll cables, so I'm keen to be able to change it. But my nice cable is stuck with an ugly heat-shrink Y split for now

 

[SHAMuuu]

I wasn't expecting it to pan out like this (otherwise I wouldn't have put so much effort into the open cups ...) but (to my ears) they are doing better closed-back.
The closed cups aren't Denon, they are eBay jobbies - they are bigger / more internal volume.

I'm not keen on subjective observations on sound quality, but I have spent some time comparing them to my main set of headphones, a pair of Fostex TH900 with Lawton cups.
The TH900 is the better headphone, where everything sounds much more clearly defined in comparison to the homebrew cans. That said, I've been choosing the S2 headphones over the Fostex because they sound great. Whilst they have more bass quantity than quality compared to the TH900, it makes them sound very dark and certain types of music sound brilliant through them as a result. By comparison the TH900 seems more clinical and sometimes less enjoyable.
With the open back cups they sounded 'bigger', but I don't know if what I was hearing was just more diffuse rather than an improvement. Think about when you cast a shadow, and when the light moves the shadow gets bigger but gets out of proportion - that's the only way I can describe it.
I need to decide what I'm doing with them next. I had swapped the ear pads and Lawton cups from the TH900 with the S2 mods for a while and it clearly improved them. I don't know if my pockets are deep enough to spring for another set of those Lawton cups and I'd end up with two pairs of very like headphones (although that never stopped me before with Grado-style builds...)

I've also ordered the G1 btw. I'll post photos of the build once its done. I'm using Elleven's GS-style cups with G cushions, those rod blocks and gimbals Martin used to do before he vanished, and a really nice cable I made.

If i understand and my eyes didn't play any trickery, you used some aftermarket ypsilon in d5k shell with open woodies right?
These open shells would work on a th900 y/n?
Have you tried the other way around (open cups on th900) like you did the Lawton cups on the homebrew.

This is very interesting, and thx for sharing such wild ideas

 

[SHAMuuu]

Double post