[jhog]

If anyone in EU has some Enigmas they’d be willing to trade or sell, I’d be interested! Got an Alo Continental CV5 looking for a home

 

[redsoxfn]

Can these headphones still be purchased new from Enigmatic Audio? There was no e-mail address on the site so I could contact them.

 

[Laike]

Sorry to bump an ancient thread, but I've made a discovery that I hope will help the remaining few owners out there. I've owned a set of these for years and have used them for only an hour or two at a time due to painful clamp force on my wide head. It was so bad that I've waffled on selling these for the last few years since I didn't feel comfortable with modding them with an Audeze LCD headband like another poster did. I love the sound so much, but not the pain.

Previously, I only tried to loosen the headband with my hands by grabbing the metal parts with my fingers and bracing the other sides with my thumb. I could bend it back enough to be comfortable, but the clamp force would return after a half hour or so of use. After reading LFF's assurance the headband is nearly indestructible earlier in this thread, I finally took the plunge yesterday and really bent the headband back with my knee as a brace. I bent with my knee bracing where the headband sits on the top of my head and one of the arms. It was a perfect clamp at that point and it didn't visually look imbalanced, so I stopped there.

A few observations

• stretching the headphones over a box for several weeks didn't work at all for me. Much like the hand stretch, it would simply go back to normal after a few hours
• I tried using the DIY elastic pilot pad posted earlier with the headband extended as far open as possible and locked into place with a paracord wrap. If you're a little crafty and the clamp is just a little too much, this is probably a very comfortable way to tackle the problem. This solution improved the clamp a little and really did wonders on spreading the weight around my head, but the clamp was still enough to give me a headache.
• LFF is right. The headband is probably near indestructible, so you probably need more force than you think to bend the headband into shape. Like more force than I would ever feel comfortable exerting on any other pair of headphones. My thumbs weren't strong enough on their own to actually bend the headband back enough to permanently loosen the clamp force, thus the use of my knee.
• At the same time, go don't go too crazy as tightening them will probably be an equal exercise in frustration due to the amount of tension you need to apply to make the headband bend and stay bent. I went just shy of a a 180 degree stretch to get the clamp force to budge. I'd probably wouldn't go to that extreme if I did it again.
• Doing this carefully will probably be a multi-day process of figuring out if you bent the headband far enough for the loosening effect to stay

Good luck