[wje]

Quote:

Hello everyone, first post here!
 
Let me first say thanks to all of you who have contributed to this thread, your creativity and passion are remarkable. 
 
I just received my first pair of T50rp headphones yesterday and naturally I spent all last night modifying them. I sort of mixed together various mods but I most closely followed the BMF 8.1 guidelines. 
 
Here is my current mod:
 
1. Silverstone foam in ear cups
2. Plasticine-loaded baffle compartments
3. White felt on rear of driver removed, replaced with 3x3cm stiff felt and 2x2cm piece of transpore tape on top of that
4. teased cotton balls to make ~2x7x7cm pads for each cup
5. stock baffle port open
6. vents closed on outside with electrical tape and ~2-3mm opening on bottom vent.
7. 840 pads
 
So far I am VERY pleased with the sound, however I have a few questions (I've read 100+ pages of the thread but the answers have eluded me.)
 
-I find that the sound is slightly fatiguing, I'm thinking this is due to the upper mids / lower treble? Any thing I can do to specifically target this issue?
 
-The ear side of my cups is untouched w/ dust cover, etc. still intact. Is it worth it to remove the felt and install silverstone foam here? In what way does modifying the ear-side of the cup actually change the sound?

 
I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect the transpore tape might be acting like a reflex dot and creating a scenario for more treble delivery.  If you can, see if pulling off the transpore tape from the felt, close them back and and test them again.

 

[Congo5]

1. bapspidoff

>-I find that the sound is slightly fatiguing, I'm thinking this is due to the upper mids / lower treble? Any thing I can do to specifically target this issue?<

 
Mine are close to your config.......although every single change makes a difference and affects the others..
1 Paxmate in cups
2 modeling clay on baffle
3 stiff craft felt taped to driver --stock white membrane intact..
4 rite aid natural absorbent cotton ......filling the cup
5 baffle ports open
6 outside vents closed
7 840 pads with paxmate  under them.
 
Yes had the same issue... a friend said they sounded LOUD....
 
well tried a few things and now I have square of stiff felt on the Ear side of the driver. it tamed the nasty and  the extra damping tightened the bass...
By now they are much less efficient but I am running them on speaker outs anyway..
I have not measured the FR since the last change.
No one else might like this..... but I do.
Have no idea what transpore tape does to the sound as i only use it to tape felt down..
 
 
 

 

[bapspidoff]

Ok, so to clarify, you are saying to keep the dust cover intact but to add another stiff piece of felt over the driver on the ear side? I can try that. I guess the other thing to try is to remove the transpore tape although for some reason I doubt that is the issue. Also, I don't want to open up the cans more than I need to. Can anyone answer my second question: what does foam / other material do on the ear side when the dust cover is removed, etc? Would foam placed on the ear side of the cup help tame the treble / mids at all?

 

[mrspeakers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Congo5 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
By now they are much less efficient but I am running them on speaker outs anyway..
 

 
The decrease in efficiency is because you are starting to control the resonances that exist in the stock phone by absorbing the energy.  For the most part, as efficiency decreases SQ improves, but the trick is to avoid notches or huge lumps in the spectrum...

 

[Congo5]

yes just cut a piece of thin stiff (non glue backed) felt and insert it in your ear pads, see what it does.. with some config's I did not like it-- but do now..
mine is down on the driver but just to test, lay it on top..any thing between the driver and ear will alter sound. good , bad or both
 
I would do what wje recommended....removing the transpore.. and see what it does. or remove half.....
try different tapes, amount of coverage, tape + felt..
early on there were posts about that tape/membrane try a search:
http://www.head-fi.org/search.php?search=transpore&containingthread[0]=452404&output=posts&action=disp&start=240
 
I am not an expert, Just read this thread and tried things....
 
a while back there was a discussion about transpore as there are different tapes marked 3M transpore, micropore, and 3M Nexcare paper tape
also lots of types of foam and everything dampens and absorbs differently..
lots of science involved with those that know,,, trial and error for the rest.
 
My T50RP's are tuned to my tastes and using Stax SR-3N to compare to. and compare they do both to my ears and frequency response graphs.
Yes I have opened them many times. so far with out breaking the wires or striping screws...
 
sorry I do not think there are any shortcuts / any perfect material. You have to try things...

 

[wje]

Quote:

Creatology?

 
That could have been the brand.  It was about 5 months ago when I made my purchase.  I pulled off the label so it didn't dry on the foam and mess it up.

 

[Congo5]

Quote:

 
The decrease in efficiency is because you are starting to control the resonances that exist in the stock phone by absorbing the energy.  For the most part, as efficiency decreases SQ improves, but the trick is to avoid notches or huge lumps in the spectrum...

Thanks MrSpeakers.. I have read this thread , am more of a reader than poster..
Dampening -- to control the movement of air.---  I like felt on both sides of driver to control bass...its what works for me.
would love to do a open housing but have not seen any encouraging results here...
anyway thanks for all your posts as I eagerly read them..
 
these are from may 8th ..   t50rp right and left and Stax SR-3 ...

http://www.head-fi.org/gallery/image/view/album/660510/id/633847/sort/display_order

 

[Cortlendt]

-I find that the sound is slightly fatiguing, I'm thinking this is due to the upper mids / lower treble? Any thing I can do to specifically target this issue?

AcostiPack brand of acoustic foam helps to reduce midrange honk.

 

[micmacmo]

these are from may 8th ..   t50rp right and left and Stax SR-3 ...
http://www.head-fi.org/gallery/image/view/album/660510/id/633847/sort/display_order

Nice looking curves. And thanks for including the Stax. It adds context/perspective to your good work!

 

[wje]

Quote:

Ok, so to clarify, you are saying to keep the dust cover intact but to add another stiff piece of felt over the driver on the ear side? I can try that. I guess the other thing to try is to remove the transpore tape although for some reason I doubt that is the issue. Also, I don't want to open up the cans more than I need to. Can anyone answer my second question: what does foam / other material do on the ear side when the dust cover is removed, etc? Would foam placed on the ear side of the cup help tame the treble / mids at all?

 
Since you essentially didn't follow one specific set of plans to perform the modifications on the headphones, then I think  you should be open to the fact that you'll probably have to open the cups several times to make changes.  I really don't see any other way around it.  However, if you stuck with a build, such as the Blue Monkey Flyer 8.1 to the "T", then you could have sealed the cups and and felt pretty assured that you wouldn't need to go back inside since you were following a proven design.

 

[micmacmo]

Quote:

 
Since you essentially didn't follow one specific set of plans to perform the modifications on the headphones, then I think  you should be open to the fact that you'll probably have to open the cups several times to make changes.  I really don't see any other way around it.  However, if you stuck with a build, such as the Blue Monkey Flyer 8.1 to the "T", then you could have sealed the cups and and felt pretty assured that you wouldn't need to go back inside since you were following a proven design.

bapspidoff, I think even if you were able to follow BMF 8.1 (or a rastapants or others)  to a T, you'd probably still want to open the cups several times to tune them to your preference (more cotton, less cotton) and to adjust for potential left/right imbalances. Plus I think your situation is compounded because the white material on the driver has been removed. I don't recall anyone posting a terrific solution once the felt has been removed. Not that one doesn't exist, it's just that no one proposed a "named" solution that gained a lot of traction But I'm sure you'll be able to arrive at a great solution for yourself providing you get into the DIY spirit.
 
If you feel the sound is bright, I'd tend to start with wje's suggestion and remove the transpore tape. You could also try transpore alone, felt alone, felt on top, and varying degrees of transpore coverage. Plus, I think adding felt ear side, as you already mentioned, might help a bit too. But I'd recommend trying to address the back side of the driver first. This is where you can get substantial changes in SQ with minor effort. 
 
Also, are you getting good bass? If not, check to see if you can improve how well the pads "seal" to your head. A good seal can improve the lower end of the spectrum, which might offset the perceived brightness.
 
(If you want to go indepth, BMF wrote over 40 posts that touched on transpore optimization. You can see them here.)  

 

[KneelJung]

Someone was asking for pics of the V Moda cable the other day.
 

 
I created a couple of reflex dots with the above material and inserted them into my cups.
 

 
Here is a better shot of my driver.
 

 
And here is the cup without the dot.
 

 
I opened them to take some pics today and to put a small amount of fiber fill over my reflex dot.
 

 
So the basic config:

1. plasticine in the baffles
2. silverstone in the cups
3. stock driver paper removed and replaced with a silky rayon type material
4. use of a reflex dot made out of some fiber board packaging material from a box of avacado's.
5. Shure 840 pads
6. V Moda cable
7. fiber fill

 
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to FR, dips, peaks, and that sort of stuff. My perception is more like bad, good, better...sounds kind of muddy, tizzy, too much this or that. The way they were configured when I sent them to Tyll was with the stock pads. They sounded OK. A lot of the resonance had been tamed out of them, but they were very mid forward with too much energy in the upper mids, which is pretty much how they measured. At the time I was happy  just to get them from sounding so closed and dark. Anyway I was able to resolve the problem by covering the ear side of the baffle with silverstone bapspidoff. I did however remove it when I got my 840 pads, and there have been many many tweaks since then. Another thing I would suggest is trying different materials other than felt for the driver. I had some tweed like stuff over the stock paper. It might still be that way, but I started experimenting again, and  inadvertently ripped the stock paper. It was a good mistake though. It made me finally remove the stock stuff covering the driver, which dramatically improved the bass. Overall I'm pretty happy with them the way they are. I might fool with the fiber fill in the cups a little, but they're sounding pretty good.

 

[kamikazeee]

Are this buds worth it for 74 U$S?
 
Keeping in mind that I plan not doing ANY mod at all

 

[hans030390]

Quote:

Are this buds worth it for 74 U$S?
 
Keeping in mind that I plan not doing ANY mod at all

 
If you're not modding them, you can do better for $75 IMO.

 

[soundstige]

Well, the direct answer is no. But, it's SO EASY to do just one or two SIMPLE mods, and bring them up to a whole other level. Just putting cotton in the cups and Shure 840 pads on makes them worth over $100.
 
Quote:

Are this buds worth it for 74 U$S?
 
Keeping in mind that I plan not doing ANY mod at all