Paul WB5AGF
New Head-Fier
Starting last (2022) summer I began watching eBay for used Sony headphones in the 'MDR' family.
I've had an MDR-V6 and MDR-7506 for years (most people consider them almost identical except for the 7506 being slightly 'brighter') and wanted to see how some of the other Sony headphones (in roughly the same price range) compared.
I didn't want to spend too much money and so stayed away from the high-end headphones and watched for models that had been released several years ago.
Part of the effort was to evaluate how the different headphones handled physical and acoustic design issues.
One of the things that I noticed was that several Sony MDR headphones have fixed-in-place perforated metal covers over the drivers ('speakers') to give them physical protection.
(background)
I became acquainted with stereo gear back in the 1970s while overseas in the Air Force. I heard the arguments about the acoustic transparency of covers over room speakers. At present I have a pair of audioengine A5+ Speakers for general use and they don't have anything over the speaker cones (I have them sitting on top of a cabinet so they're out-of-the-way).
I'm of the opinion that at least a minimal degree of physical protection is needed for headphone drivers to protect against fingers accidentally hitting them when taking headphones on or off.
------------------------------
I use Equalizer APO (running on a HP z600 PC (a workstation from the 2009 era) under Windows 7) to minimize of the headphones acoustic limitations (the MDR-7509HD Headphones sound pretty bad before being equalized).
I use the headphone equalizer settings available at :
https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md
to try and modify the headphone's frequency response curves to more nearly match the Harman Curves and then try and transform them to have the sonic characteristics of the Austrian Audio Hi-X65 Headphones (the nicest headphones that I own). This works rather well on some of the Sony MDR headphones.
-------------------------------
I've become aware that using perforated metal covers over the drivers can have the undesired effect of producing acoustic diffraction effects ..... with some of the Sony headphones showing extreme sensitivity to placement on the head ... I suspect due to destructive interference at certain audio frequencies.
I can't see anyway to get around this problem and would appreciate hearing from other headphone users.
(signed)
Paul
I've had an MDR-V6 and MDR-7506 for years (most people consider them almost identical except for the 7506 being slightly 'brighter') and wanted to see how some of the other Sony headphones (in roughly the same price range) compared.
I didn't want to spend too much money and so stayed away from the high-end headphones and watched for models that had been released several years ago.
Part of the effort was to evaluate how the different headphones handled physical and acoustic design issues.
One of the things that I noticed was that several Sony MDR headphones have fixed-in-place perforated metal covers over the drivers ('speakers') to give them physical protection.
(background)
I became acquainted with stereo gear back in the 1970s while overseas in the Air Force. I heard the arguments about the acoustic transparency of covers over room speakers. At present I have a pair of audioengine A5+ Speakers for general use and they don't have anything over the speaker cones (I have them sitting on top of a cabinet so they're out-of-the-way).
I'm of the opinion that at least a minimal degree of physical protection is needed for headphone drivers to protect against fingers accidentally hitting them when taking headphones on or off.
------------------------------
I use Equalizer APO (running on a HP z600 PC (a workstation from the 2009 era) under Windows 7) to minimize of the headphones acoustic limitations (the MDR-7509HD Headphones sound pretty bad before being equalized).
I use the headphone equalizer settings available at :
https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md
to try and modify the headphone's frequency response curves to more nearly match the Harman Curves and then try and transform them to have the sonic characteristics of the Austrian Audio Hi-X65 Headphones (the nicest headphones that I own). This works rather well on some of the Sony MDR headphones.
-------------------------------
I've become aware that using perforated metal covers over the drivers can have the undesired effect of producing acoustic diffraction effects ..... with some of the Sony headphones showing extreme sensitivity to placement on the head ... I suspect due to destructive interference at certain audio frequencies.
I can't see anyway to get around this problem and would appreciate hearing from other headphone users.
(signed)
Paul
