Just listened to some Fostex T50RPs today... WOW!

[kingoftown1]

Quote:

Just put the T50RP on my wish list..a bit perplex about the number of post on this thread compare to the six reviews on amazon.

Amazon itself doesn't stock the T50RP.  The only time you'll see it there is when some third party vendor decides to list it.  Hence so few reviews.

 

[wdahm519]

Quote:

Just put the T50RP on my wish list..a bit perplex about the number of post on this thread compare to the six reviews on amazon.

I hope by wishlist you mean you're buying it tomorrow. 

 

[headhog]

Quote:

I hope by wishlist you mean you're buying it tomorrow. 

 
Unfortunately no but hopfully next month.I am a bit eager to try them out since most of you here think so highly of them.I hope there still decent to listen to even without a mod.

 

[iowercase]

Has anyone had experience with removing the cover felt on the 840 pads?  Seems like it'd be a decent way to bring out the highs without sacrificing bass response, better than a reflex dot which works but definitely takes some oomph out of the bottom end.
 
And is there general consensus that the crusted-on thin felt on the earside baffles should be scraped off?  Not the dust cover, but just the stuff on top.

 

[devouringone3]

 
 
I have no secrets, I will show my full mod after the innerfidelity competition. I used that Supermod kit on eBay.

 

[soze]

 
Quote:

 

How does it sound?

 

[devouringone3]

Pretty good but I can't really compare it with anything high-end (because I don't have anything high-end, flagships, dedicated DACs and Amps and all that stuff).
 
It is my best sounding headphone, clearly, just because the mids are revealing stuff my other headphones can't see... it is still very mid centric. I haven't managed to push extension that far, but I've certainly flattened the frequency curve, overally, and I've cleaned up the sound so much. They are now the least resonant headphone ever, so much some guy would surely complain my headphone sound clinical instead of musical (what does that even mean?). I'd respond that the sound waves last and reverb a lot less longer in the cups (kinda when you're in a music class and you take a guitar to the practice cubicle and there's no echo at all; and you feel isolated from the rest of the world outside, no matter how hard the noob is banging on the drum behind the door (and no, my headphones don't isolate well, to answer that already.. and I think I've opened-air them even more)). A wave crashes into your ear at full force and then returns inside the cup and gets lost forever in that acoustical labyrinth I built for them... and for that reason you need to raise the volume quite a bit to attain a similar level of perceived loudness (say compared to stock, I should ask bluemonkeyflyer to evaluate that with his CD thing), so I do have removed overally sensitivity to the driver.
 
The bass isn't boomy at all, it's the fastest I have ever heard (almost ephemerous, but not lacking). I definitely think it has diminished in terms of quantity (compared to a stock T50RP) but improved twice in terms of quality. The lowest notes are all being reproduced accurately, and sounds as simple as a bassdrum hit are now incredibly textured and I now enjoy classifying them even more. You don't "feel" them anymore (as a front/mass of pressurized air coming at you), you "hear" it, reduced to a more logical expression: sound waves, and their needed caracteristically high amplitude.
 
I think a lot of headphones and their drivers can't do bass very well, so makers just try to augment it artificially, "enhance" it, and that's where my T50RP succeeds over them, by giving you a natural, textured, and present bass, at any set volume. Not overly punchy, not recessed.
 
I say that with my T50RP you hear the bass instead of feeling it.. this will be a downer for some people, but I don't think we should be listening to headphones if "feeling" the bass is what we want, speakers are more appropriate for that purpose. I prefer a musical and note by note accurate playback of something recorded more than a tweaked, virtually "boosted"/ enhanced, fun, lively, artifically positionnal (and other overrated qualificatives people sometimes use to describe the sound of a headphone they like or not) when trying too hard to give the listener a representation of how it would be like if you would have been there in front of the artist when he his performance got recorded. Want it or not, giving you this impression is the job of the "recording side" of the .mp3, CD, or recorded audio material you use: the job of the producer, the artist, the studio owner, etc. All we head-fiers actually can do about it is play it back (from god knows how many sources, converters, amplifiers, transducers... because each of them manage to change the sound) with the highest possible "fidelity". Anyway now I'm getting a little bit too meta-.
 
Because of all those prior arguments, especially the ones concerning the bass, my T50RP isn't the same anymore.
 
I don't know what to say about the 3D imaging, positionality, sound -staging / -layering, separation, whatever you call it. All I know is that they give me good virtual haircuts and they make good environmental sounds for relaxing on a beach, in front of a nightly wood fire, in the midst of a thunderstorm, or for hearing birds in a forest (and THAT was pretty 3-dimensionnally amazing too, so good job my headphone).
 
I think I've succeeded in clearing up the sound and making the headphone less fatiguing and confused, which I believe is the main goal of someone who tackle (and purpose of) the dampening task. The quality of the driver is great and essentially it can reproduce every instrument very well, your brain will do the rest of the separation because there is only so much a stereo headphone can do.
 
 
Keep in mind you guys don't know the most dramatic part of my mod yet. I can say to you I've used a fair amount of plasticine (so far you've seen my Paxmate lining, nothing out of the extraordinary: the RastaPants "less is more" base scheme... but -->), and a very special, multi layered / textured / air-connected square reflex dot, followed by (I call it) a reflex column, in replacement of the random material (like wool, coton, watt) people now throw in their cups when they have finished the big of their mod (at that point they play with the pads too).
 
My headphones are also heavily modified on the exterior, three mods are for the sound and one for the comfort (indirectly this is affecting the sound too because it puts you into a more relaxed state and you can listen better this way, and for longer, and listen attentively if you want it or need it, without ever having to think or care about pain and such discomfortable things). I use default T50RP pads and I don't think other pads would do as well for what I did to them... well and, I'll stop here because I don't want to say too much about this part yet.
 
My mod is fully amovible and I can unmod it to stock condition... at the cost of brute force, blood and sweat. It took me two full days of vacation and a table ("and a table"!!) to do it and it would take me at least one afternoon to undo it (mostly to remove the plasticine I've molded/shaped very precisely and compressed / sticked heavily against the baffle).
 
"Sticked" ?
 
I've tested the sound about 7 times in total by modifying only one cup, stopping, giving it a listen, one ear at a time, by playing with the left/right balance bar on Winamp and by switching ear sides for half a period.
 
Okay good night.

 

[a_recording]

Hi guys,
 
I've read over this thread recently and had a chance to buy a pair of Fostex T50RP's in Australia for a really reasonable price (110AUD) on eBay. Since then I've been doing some minor tweaks and tinkers, primarily just stuffing the baffles with blu-tac etc. These are an amazing set of headphones, transient performance is only matched by my Sony Z1000's that cost four times the price.
 
Just wanted to share a recent cheap tweak that I liked the results of. I was in the newly opened Japanese homeware store Daiso, which just opened a flagship store in Sydney, and saw an entire section for melamine sponges - those white abrasive cleaners. Here's an example pic (not the one I actually bought but to give an illustration):
 

 
Doing a bit of a google, it seemed that melamine sponge was an open cell foam that is occasionally used in speaker damping because of its great ability to soak up mid and high frequencies. So I bought a pack of larger, flat squares for $2.80.
 
Yesterday I opened up my T50's, did some measurements, then cut the foam into a shape that would fit into the cups, making holes for the plastic posts etc.
 
I can report that its been a tremendous improvement over the speaker damping fibre I was using previously, particularly cleaning up a lot of the plasticky reflected sound from the ear cups and making the sound more cohesive. Considering the cost of material, this was a really pleasant surprise.
 
Now, if I could find a way to increase the bass response even more, these would be easily the best headphones in my collection. As they stand now though they are beautifully natural in timbre and fantastic for acoustic.
 
 

 

[RayPierrewit]

I'm glad to see someone else has tried using these. I posted a little while back that I cut, with a sharp x-acto blade, one of these sponges (magic eraser) into little 1/8" - 1/4" cubes and filled the cups with them. I much prefered this to the cotton ball method, I'm just waiting for someone else to try it and post.

 

[Twinster]

Just for your information the human brain perception of mono sound is not that good. I did the same initially with only altering one side and comparing with the other to hear the mod impact and it was very hard. Someone I respect on this thread gave me this insight and he was right.
 
You would better off getting another set of T50rp (I know it's another $80) to compare your mod to an original set.Again this is just an observation. YMMV. 

 
Quote:

Pretty good but I can't really compare it with anything high-end (because I don't have anything high-end, flagships, dedicated DACs and Amps and all that stuff).
 
It is my best sounding headphone, clearly, just because the mids are revealing stuff my other headphones can't see... it is still very mid centric. I haven't managed to push extension that far, but I've certainly flattened the frequency curve, overally, and I've cleaned up the sound so much. They are now the least resonant headphone ever, so much some guy would surely complain my headphone sound clinical instead of musical (what does that even mean?). I'd respond that the sound waves last and reverb a lot less longer in the cups (kinda when you're in a music class and you take a guitar to the practice cubicle and there's no echo at all; and you feel isolated from the rest of the world outside, no matter how hard the noob is banging on the drum behind the door (and no, my headphones don't isolate well, to answer that already.. and I think I've opened-air them even more)). A wave crashes into your ear at full force and then returns inside the cup and gets lost forever in that acoustical labyrinth I built for them... and for that reason you need to raise the volume quite a bit to attain a similar level of perceived loudness (say compared to stock, I should ask bluemonkeyflyer to evaluate that with his CD thing), so I do have removed overally sensitivity to the driver.
 
The bass isn't boomy at all, it's the fastest I have ever heard (almost ephemerous, but not lacking). I definitely think it has diminished in terms of quantity (compared to a stock T50RP) but improved twice in terms of quality. The lowest notes are all being reproduced accurately, and sounds as simple as a bassdrum hit are now incredibly textured and I now enjoy classifying them even more. You don't "feel" them anymore (as a front/mass of pressurized air coming at you), you "hear" it, reduced to a more logical expression: sound waves, and their needed caracteristically high amplitude.
 
I think a lot of headphones and their drivers can't do bass very well, so makers just try to augment it artificially, "enhance" it, and that's where my T50RP succeeds over them, by giving you a natural, textured, and present bass, at any set volume. Not overly punchy, not recessed.
 
I say that with my T50RP you hear the bass instead of feeling it.. this will be a downer for some people, but I don't think we should be listening to headphones if "feeling" the bass is what we want, speakers are more appropriate for that purpose. I prefer a musical and note by note accurate playback of something recorded more than a tweaked, virtually "boosted"/ enhanced, fun, lively, artifically positionnal (and other overrated qualificatives people sometimes use to describe the sound of a headphone they like or not) when trying too hard to give the listener a representation of how it would be like if you would have been there in front of the artist when he his performance got recorded. Want it or not, giving you this impression is the job of the "recording side" of the .mp3, CD, or recorded audio material you use: the job of the producer, the artist, the studio owner, etc. All we head-fiers actually can do about it is play it back (from god knows how many sources, converters, amplifiers, transducers... because each of them manage to change the sound) with the highest possible "fidelity". Anyway now I'm getting a little bit too meta-.
 
Because of all those prior arguments, especially the ones concerning the bass, my T50RP isn't the same anymore.
 
I don't know what to say about the 3D imaging, positionality, sound -staging / -layering, separation, whatever you call it. All I know is that they give me good virtual haircuts and they make good environmental sounds for relaxing on a beach, in front of a nightly wood fire, in the midst of a thunderstorm, or for hearing birds in a forest (and THAT was pretty 3-dimensionnally amazing too, so good job my headphone).
 
I think I've succeeded in clearing up the sound and making the headphone less fatiguing and confused, which I believe is the main goal of someone who tackle (and purpose of) the dampening task. The quality of the driver is great and essentially it can reproduce every instrument very well, your brain will do the rest of the separation because there is only so much a stereo headphone can do.
 
 
Keep in mind you guys don't know the most dramatic part of my mod yet. I can say to you I've used a fair amount of plasticine (so far you've seen my Paxmate lining, nothing out of the extraordinary: the RastaPants "less is more" base scheme... but -->), and a very special, multi layered / textured / air-connected square reflex dot, followed by (I call it) a reflex column, in replacement of the random material (like wool, coton, watt) people now throw in their cups when they have finished the big of their mod (at that point they play with the pads too).
 
My headphones are also heavily modified on the exterior, three mods are for the sound and one for the comfort (indirectly this is affecting the sound too because it puts you into a more relaxed state and you can listen better this way, and for longer, and listen attentively if you want it or need it, without ever having to think or care about pain and such discomfortable things). I use default T50RP pads and I don't think other pads would do as well for what I did to them... well and, I'll stop here because I don't want to say too much about this part yet.
 
My mod is fully amovible and I can unmod it to stock condition... at the cost of brute force, blood and sweat. It took me two full days of vacation and a table ("and a table"!!) to do it and it would take me at least one afternoon to undo it (mostly to remove the plasticine I've molded/shaped very precisely and compressed / sticked heavily against the baffle).
 
"Sticked" ?
 
I've tested the sound about 7 times in total by modifying only one cup, stopping, giving it a listen, one ear at a time, by playing with the left/right balance bar on Winamp and by switching ear sides for half a period.
 
Okay good night.

 

 

[Twinster]

Finished my first Objective 2 amplifier yesterday and I tried it the T50rp and as reported by others it's a very good match. I have selected a 1x & 3x gain (increased the 2.5 to 3x after testing with the T50rp and HD650). We'll do more listening time with the Fostex later today.

 

[spacemanspliff]

Is there a mod in particular that will give these a large sound stage? I am interested in modding a pair specifically for gaming and movies.
 
Does anyone do the mods professionally? I don't mind doing them myself but also would love to get a already modded pair.

 

[Nevod]

Quote:

Keep in mind you guys don't know the most dramatic part of my mod yet. I can say to you I've used a fair amount of plasticine (so far you've seen my Paxmate lining, nothing out of the extraordinary: the RastaPants "less is more" base scheme... but -->), and a very special, multi layered / textured / air-connected square reflex dot, followed by (I call it) a reflex column, in replacement of the random material (like wool, coton, watt) people now throw in their cups when they have finished the big of their mod (at that point they play with the pads too).

That, to me, sounds quite like what I've thought after reading about cardboard disc and LFF's suggestions about dispersion. I've been thinking about making corrugated cardboard/paper pillars around plastic 'suspension' posts and central 'column'. As my T20s haven't yet arrived, I did not yet had any oppotunity to try it.

 

[powerlifter450]

I've tried my thunderpants with a variety of amps. Always seemed to need more power. Purchased a new lyrics from schiit. That should finally be enough to drive them well. Can u get loud deep bass with the o2? I'm looking to bring forth the thunder!

 

[joelpearce]

Quote:

I've tried my thunderpants with a variety of amps. Always seemed to need more power. Purchased a new lyrics from schiit. That should finally be enough to drive them well. Can u get loud deep bass with the o2? I'm looking to bring forth the thunder!

The O2 gives you lots of whatever's in the recording.  It's a strong amp, but doesn't add anything, and has no option for things like bass boost.  It has oodles of power to push the T50RP drivers, though.