[eliainen]

Hi, I'm pretty interested about headphones and their manufacturing. I'm kinda new so bear with me, but is there any cheap way to make a headphone measurement rig for testing drivers and diy headphones? I've already found an alright measurement microphone but nothing else. The mic I've found was the Superlux ECM999. I would appreciate the help! (ps: my budget is as minimum as possible because I'm only 14 years old.)

 

[GREQ]

You will definitely want to make some kind of dummy head for the headphone measuring.
The cheapest 'all in one' solution right now is the miniDSP EARS https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/ears-headphone-jig
which is basically a binaural microphone system.
It's not perfect however, as the ears are are little too close together and more closely resemble a small child's head size than an adult.
But you can see that it's actually only a few simple parts.

Essentially it's a rack, 2 microphones, 2 silicone 'dummy' ears and a gain switch.
You've already got the most expensive part, and I don't imagine you will be moulding your own silicone ears, but you may want to consider acquiring silicone, leather or something similar as the base around which the ear pads rest around the microphone, as that best resembles and interacts with sound as skin does.
Tubes of silicone in hardware stores are very cheap at about 5-10 euros a tube. (just don't buy acrylic by accident).
If you want to make a simple mould for the silicone, don't forget to coat it in something like vaseline or a mould-removal spray (more expensive).

Also, download REW (room eq wizard) and learn how to use this software, as it's probably the best free software you can get for making measurements.
There is plenty of documentation online in various sources on how to learn the basics for headphone measuring.

The biggest difficulty for you will be calibration of your microphone and jig, where you start to get usable results that make some correlation to other measurement kits/tools.
Because the microphone you use, the jig, the materials, the microphone distance from the driver/headphone will all drastically affect the measured frequency response.

So first of all you might need to make two or three measurements of famous headphones, so you can compare your measurements directly with the others found on the internet.
From this kind of comparison, you will be able to make a manual calibration.

Measuring single drivers alone is a much more complicated task, and only a few companies in the world have developed laser technology to do this properly.
A few of us have brought up the topic recently in the Headphone Driver Pics thread - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-headphone-driver-pics-thread.202122/page-51#post-14616428

 

[eliainen]

You will definitely want to make some kind of dummy head for the headphone measuring.
The cheapest 'all in one' solution right now is the miniDSP EARS https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/ears-headphone-jig
which is basically a binaural microphone system.
It's not perfect however, as the ears are are little too close together and more closely resemble a small child's head size than an adult.
But you can see that it's actually only a few simple parts.

Essentially it's a rack, 2 microphones, 2 silicone 'dummy' ears and a gain switch.
You've already got the most expensive part, and I don't imagine you will be moulding your own silicone ears, but you may want to consider acquiring silicone, leather or something similar as the base around which the ear pads rest around the microphone, as that best resembles and interacts with sound as skin does.
Tubes of silicone in hardware stores are very cheap at about 5-10 euros a tube. (just don't buy acrylic by accident).
If you want to make a simple mould for the silicone, don't forget to coat it in something like vaseline or a mould-removal spray (more expensive).

Also, download REW (room eq wizard) and learn how to use this software, as it's probably the best free software you can get for making measurements.
There is plenty of documentation online in various sources on how to learn the basics for headphone measuring.

The biggest difficulty for you will be calibration of your microphone and jig, where you start to get usable results that make some correlation to other measurement kits/tools.
Because the microphone you use, the jig, the materials, the microphone distance from the driver/headphone will all drastically affect the measured frequency response.

So first of all you might need to make two or three measurements of famous headphones, so you can compare your measurements directly with the others found on the internet.
From this kind of comparison, you will be able to make a manual calibration.

Measuring single drivers alone is a much more complicated task, and only a few companies in the world have developed laser technology to do this properly.
A few of us have brought up the topic recently in the Headphone Driver Pics thread - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-headphone-driver-pics-thread.202122/page-51#post-14616428

Hey thanks for the fast reply! The miniDsp EARS seems pretty decent so I'm considering to buy it!

 

[GREQ]

Hey thanks for the fast reply! The miniDsp EARS seems pretty decent so I'm considering to buy it!

This is the route I took.
I decided it would be better for me and other people, since it's somewhat popular among enthusiasts.
So everyone who makes measurements using the EARS should be getting similar results with the same headphones and because they're all calibrated to the same specification everyone who uses one should be able to make comparisons with a certain degree of accuracy.