[cyanoacry]

Just finished my latest hacking endeavor and ended up with a pair of homemade headphones for relatively cheap (about the cost of two speaker drivers: $7). They sound really good for the price I paid; they're also comfortable due to the foam that I used. I scavenged the band from an old Plantronics headset that died, so no harm done there.

They're really, really open. Bass manages to be just fine, although sometimes it's overpowering and the sound ends up muddled. A friend of mine's been working on his, and suffice to say, they're more like complete speaker systems on a headband -- he's got two drivers on each side, a tweeter and a woofer.

 

[Smiley Man]

are they just ordinary drivers?

*looks at 2 2" drivers in the corner*

 

[Spacko]

Head-fi people really are creative, and crazy

How would you compare them? To some cheap buds that come with players?

 

[AnimeEd]

a little hard to be unbias when reviewing cans like that

 

[taymat]

Some people are gonna turn on the tv and think they're deaf.

You gave it a go though and that's more than I've done, I've always wanted to to build a pair of diy headphones/speakers from scratch. Decent speaker drivers are easy to find though, decent headphone drivers are near impossible to get hold of.

 

[Darwin022]

wow, your Ghetto MacGuyver-ness far exceeds mine! nice work

edit: damn, this annoys me, I could have done home-made Qualias! when I went to get new speakers for my car ('90 CRX), I was going to get really nice ones, but when I went to best buy, they had 2 pair of *ugh* Sony xplodes the right size. While I hate Sony Xplodes..... they were $10 a pair... I could not pass it up. They work for this car...

 

[Kaori]

Yeah, I managed to just wake up and saw Cyanoacry made his post. >.> I'm the friend he's refering to. My headphones have a tweeter, and a midrange on either side, not a woofer. So eh, i'm happy with them, I don't feel any need to buy some extremely overpriced pair this way. Since this site doesnt' really allow any reasonable sized pictures in attachments, the picture of mine are here .

I've been happy with them so far, and what's better, is the metal design allows them to double as a bludgeoning device! I can protect myself while listening to some trance! Yay! They are rather bulky though, so without a proper amplifier I don't get much bass, I just wish it was easier to get headphone drivers to begin with. Building headphones is like building laptops, some parts are there, some you have to build yourself. It's a bit hard to get everything together. Though these headphones are made of:

1. Pieces of a shirt (padding)
2. A2156 Midrange drivers.
3. The tweeters that accompanied them (sorry, there wasn't any readable model number on them.)
4. 2 metal pieces of a shelf. (the bottom parts that hold up the shelf.)
5. Some RG58 wire (which i'm replacing with Cat5 later today if I remember)
6. A ****load of nuts and bolts.
7. Part of a metal keyboard.
8. Wireties.
9. Some rubber wire covering.

Thats about all I can really name. Though I can't wait to see Cyanoacry's headphones next time he visits me. >.> (Don't forget them!)

 

[Darwin022]

^^ nice

I have a new project I think...

PS: you might want to get your illegal copy of XP out of the picture

 

[Kaori]

Blah, thanks. -.- I don't run it anyway, and haven't for years. *snaps it in half and throws it in the trash* My moms boyfriend took the original when he moved out anyway. @_@

 

[cyanoacry]

Yeah, mine are just regular drivers that I picked up from a surplus electronics store. They're about 4-5" across, and came with a 1W rating, frequency specifications of 160Hz-10000Hz.

They sound incredibly awesome compared to cheap earbuds or anything of the same price. Kaori and I have developed have sometimes experienced "I've-forgotten-I'm-wearing-my-headphones-syndrome", just because they sound like regular speakers. The foam padding I use on mine helps with that -- there's absolutly nothing touching the ear, just the skin around it, so it feels very natural and nice.

They sound better than my $99 pair of Sony MDR CD200's, and are definitely a lot more comfortable...

Now I just need to figure out what to use the other pairs of the wires for. (We're using Cat5 structured cabling, with 4 pairs of twisted wire; It's the same stuff used for Ethernet. They're rated to 10Mhz+ -- I think it's better for audio than all those other expensive high-quality coppper.

Happily enough, I also managed to find a cheap 9v powered amp over at the store for $2.99. Surplus electronics really are the best.