[Tadgh]

Hi all,
 
My name's Tadgh and I'm a long time reader of the head-fi forums as well as one time review poster
 
I'm an Irish lad who has the misfortune to live in a remote city with nowhere to buy decent audio equipment! (You think I'm exaggerating, but our idea of city is different to most other ideas of what a city is. Galway is considered a main city with a population of 75K) I purchase anything I get online so I'm stuck with relying on what others say, so I suppose this forum is the natural place for me to end up!
 
I work odd jobs in development (like now, I will admit I'm like a week in the job and totally out of my depth, but that's the best way to
learn ) and videography. Sometimes I get paid to build custom PCs and setups for people, which is one of my personal hobbies! I have an interest in pretty much anything DIY, technology or otherwise. I keep dogs and live in a house with normally 7/8 pets.
 
 
Anyway, now I've got that out of the way, I'm looking for some advice regarding modding my MDR7506s and maybe making another purchase.
 
The 7506s arrived in the post straight from amazon two weeks ago, I had purchased them with money I received as a gift, after having done my research, finally being won over from a review on thewirecutter.com (a site I respect highly for it's testing methodology). They cost me 100 euro with postage and packaging so needless to say I had high expectations (Coming from a pair of Sennheiser HD201s).
 
Having been listening to them pretty much constantly for the last two weeks my expectations were.. met??
 
My feelings about these headphones are complex. I like a top heavy sound, I like lots of smooth highs, and I like gently pronounced mids - so on the one hand I love them, on the other hand I don't.
 
The lower highs (about 8-12K) are really satisfying and I love them, but there's an exceptional spike in higher frequencies that creates a lot of sillibance and unwanted sparkle, so much so that very high frequencies almost drown out the rest of the music, which I hate. . The mids are underwhelming, and a little too bright for my tastes, giving voice an unnatural tint, and coloring tracks severely. The bass is almost exactly where I'd like it to be, but maybe if they were toned back and presented tighter I'd be pleased..
 
I'm feeling a little bit guilty about spending so much money on something so love-hate. I can't decide if they really irk me or if I really like them. The old-fashioned telephone cable coil is fantastically durable and stretchable, two things I *really* need, but terribly heavy and unweildly and a little ugly. The fit is nice and tight, I do quite like the sound isolation, but the drivers touch my ears and I find them uncomfortable after a while. I don't know, I rarely come across 100 euro whatever happens ;-;.
 
Having said that I do have some money in soon, and  I'm purchasing an AMP/DAC, and have about 150 left over to spend on whatever I choose. I've been thinking about fitting some velour ear pads to these and seeing if that helps, and I've also been thinking about modding them, I hear there's an attachable circuit that kills the highest highs a bit without effecting much else.
 
But I could also buy some new cans and keep these around as spares? I don't rightly know, and I'd really like some advice so I don't goof up and find myself in a state of love-hate with expensive headphones again!
 
Thanks in advance!

 

[tomb]

The number one mod on Sony V6's or 7506's is to replace the ear pads with velours.  You can order the this off-brand from amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Velour-Earcushions-Technica-Mdr7506-Headphones/dp/B0081SO0RM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1435844131&sr=8-2&keywords=velour+pads+for+V6
 
Or, you can purchase the velour pads for the Beyer DT250: http://www.amazon.com/Beyerdynamic-EDT250V-Headphone-Pads-Black/dp/B0016MF7W2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435844131&sr=8-1&keywords=velour+pads+for+V6 
 
The Beyers are probably better and are slightly bigger.  In many cases, they will allow the V6/7506 to fit as a true circum-aural headphone.  In stock form with the pleather pads, they're sort of in-between circum-aural and supra-aural, with some of the bad qualities of both.
 
Note that the stock pads from Sony will deteriorate quickly.  Within a year or two, you'll have black flakes all over your ears, head, and neck - if not worse.  I've had them develop splits within a few months.  Still, the V6/7506 is a very worthy headphone and has been around since the 80's.

 

 

[Tadgh]

 The Beyers are probably better and are slightly bigger.  In many cases, they will allow the V6/7506 to fit as a true circum-aural headphone.  In stock form with the pleather pads, they're sort of in-between circum-aural and supra-aural, with some of the bad qualities of both.  
Note that the stock pads from Sony will deteriorate quickly.  Within a year or two, you'll have black flakes all over your ears, head, and neck - if not worse.  I've had them develop splits within a few months.  Still, the V6/7506 is a very worthy headphone and has been around since the 80's.

 

Don't get me wrong, they're certainly the best headphones I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, but I can think of ways to improve them from a music enjoyment standpoint. Bring out the mids in them and turn down the frazzle at the very high frequencies and they'd be almost ideal. Get the bass presentation tighter and along with those two things and they'd be beasts!
 
Thanks for the links, do you know anywhere that might sell them in Europe? I found the Beyerdynamic pads in amazon.de, but they're 128 euro (which has to be a typo ) so no die there. I'll look around some more and see what I can come up with  

Also, could you explain quite how the 7506s blur the line between on and over ear, and what effects this has on their sonic properties?
 
Thanks!

 

[Tadgh]

sorry should've quoted .-. @tomb 

 

[tomb]

Generally speaking and I'm conjecturing to a large extent, on-ear headphones (supra-aural) tend to have peaky spikes.  There are many reasons for this, probably not the least of which is they pretty much smash the ears into perverted shapes and lack any kind of consistent seal around the ear.  This causes the response to vary and it becomes very difficult to make the response consistent from the mfr.  If enough clamping force is used, then the phone can be optimized as a "point source" similar to IEM's and the response is OK.  Sennheiser Momemtum On-Ears and HD25's are probably examples of those.
 
Hopefully, you see the problem if the Sony's are somewhere in between.  You can't design for both and you never get a good seal with the in-between fit.  For people with small enough ears, they're just fine out of the box.  For others, the peakiness can be used to discern detail in the recording studio, which still serves a useful purpose, I guess.
 
In general, the velour pad upgrades address the short life of the stock pads as the most important advantage.  However, if the velours are large enough, they can act to mellow out the sound and reduce the peaks.  It won't help the mids, unfortunately, which are an inherent trait with the V6/7506, but it will focus the bottom end much more strongly and in my memory - mellow out the highs.  Note that the cheaper velour pads may be even smaller than the stock Sony's and will address very little except the short life of the stock pads.  They may make things worse.

 

[Tadgh]

-snip-

Thanks for the advice, sounds like a big payoff for a roughly 25 euro investment - I've noticed that they are HELLA temperamental yeah, changing the fit a little does alter the way they sound noticeably, and mashing ones ear to an unusual shape is a perfect description of what I have right now. Those alterations are all exactly what I'm looking for so I'll be purchasing the best priced Beyerdynamic set I can find (do the GT990 pads work in replacement of the BEDT250V? Because the latter are priced at 128 euro for some reason.. The former is about 25)

 

[Music Alchemist]

Follow my tutorial to improve the sound quality of this headphone.
 

  Download and install the free trial of Sonarworks Headphone Calibration software. (Or purchase it.)
 
Download and install this VST adapter in foobar2000.
 
Go to Components, VST plugins and add the Sonarworks plugin.
 
Go to Playback, DSP Manager and activate the Sonarworks plugin. Then click Configure Selected.

 
The software is actually called Sonarworks Reference 3 Headphone. Just select the Sony preset. It makes the sound much more accurate.

 

[Tadgh]

  Follow my tutorial to improve the sound quality of this headphone.
 
 
The software is actually called Sonarworks Reference 3 Headphone. Just select the Sony preset. It makes the sound much more accurate.

Thank you for your advice, but I'm looking to make physical improvements and stay away from software as these cans are shared between many devices