[Gamerphile]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhynri /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm waiting on a set of these, I'll most definitely do a lot of tweaking. I have both 650's and 800s to compare to, as well as the PC-166s, which are a fine pair of headphones. Being stuck in a loud barracks (full of idiotic AIT students), I am looking forward to the sound isolation. I intend to experiment with both driving them from the PC-166's USB key and also from my Total Bithead. We'll see how it all goes, but i have to wait for Christmas Exodus for any of this fun to begin. I'll keep you posted!

The USB series used for these products as they are now does not power etc. the PC350 and similar products as they are not amped and such well enough for the experts at Sennheiser Communications to be satisfied with it for these semi demanding 'phones(its actually a very high quality USB dongle but its still not good enough amping etc) so thats why only the right products ship with the current USB version. And I personally would recommend at least something like your Total Bithead or good HP amping sound card- got the UDAC/BUDA my self but thats kinda over kill for this product unless you have something else for such an expensive system

Mine is bought more for the dual amping, balancing and for my HD800's. Thinking of balancing a second pair of PC350 one of these days

But back to the point - I use that USB dongle at times for PC 350 and my gaming laptop and its okay but I definatly want something better knowing how good PC350 can perform - have been poking at the guys at SennCom for some time now but I would stick to buying a PC350 if you have the money and want closed gaming HP's 'course new things takes time to engineer - a lot of time.... and blood, sweat and gaming

 

[Hezer]

Another happy PC350 heromodder. It's just amazing that with those little changes these headphones got their quality/price ratio to level that I expected from Sennheiser when I bought them, though as said earlier the mic is superb and that only is worth the money.

And thanks to ourfpshero for discovering this modification. I put four 2mm holes to enclosure and the difference is truly a huge one. I might drill one hole more, so I can use the headphones in some other places as well as with my desktop that has some audio settings to boost quality.

 

[Dunceiam]

Just did the mod myself, works beautifully with three 1/8" holes. Bass is much stronger, highly recommend this mod.

Thanks for all the help guys. Now off to go build some Vacuum Tube Headphone Amps

.

 

[Skoobs]

another hero-mod among you now. (me, did it today)

sounds a little uncontrolled though, may try attaching something to control airflow more. how i went about it, and what i decide to try out later.

 

[ourfpshero]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skoobs /img/forum/go_quote.gif another hero-mod among you now. (me, did it today) sounds a little uncontrolled though, may try attaching something to control airflow more. how i went about it, and what i decide to try out later.

happy to hear all the good results.
skoob- try some cotton balls in the cup to dampen the uncontrolled bass. i have one in each cup (the cotton ball is pulled aprt and fluffed)

 

[Jaawa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ourfpshero /img/forum/go_quote.gif happy to hear all the good results. skoob- try some cotton balls in the cup to dampen the uncontrolled bass. i have one in each cup (the cotton ball is pulled aprt and fluffed)

+1

I second this, cotton works nicely, although I haven't tried any other material for smoothing out the flabby bass. Surely it might bring something like rolling off the highs or the like (I haven't noticed any such effect though), so another way to go at it would be sealing shut a hole or two, depending on how many you've drilled.

I did drill 11 tiny holes, and then went crazy with the amount of cotton which I cannibalized from an old winter jacket

So that approach does work for some of us. At least I didn't feel the need to seal any holes after stuffing the cans with lots of cotton.

It's great that more people are discovering this mod and trying it out for themselves, this mod is easily the coolest thing that has happened to me on Head-Fi

Thanks hero.

 

[d$^]

ok i did it today as well i tried just one small 1" one in the middle on the top, might do another 2 holes on left and right sites, not sure, feels like bass released a bit, but need more, also a bit uncontrolled yes..

 

[Skoobs]

bad experience with dampening... =P

hahaha

i cut up a maxi pad or whatever to the size of the cup so that i could have a thick dampening material in there, but apparently the fluffy part of those damn things isnt fluffy so much as powdery.

so... fail. maybe next time. hahaha

 

[d$^]

A big thanks for this mod!! I drilled another 2 holes in both cups today, i'm amazed, it's makes huge diffrence, so i will do another 2 in each cup and get HD595 pads to make them more open, for positioning i love this headset, you can hear the things far and almost correctly, some n00bs saying i'm playing with wallhack lol, music sounds really really better after mod, i'm absolutly love my PC350 now !!!

 

[Jaawa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skoobs /img/forum/go_quote.gif bad experience with dampening... =P hahaha i cut up a maxi pad or whatever to the size of the cup so that i could have a thick dampening material in there, but apparently the fluffy part of those damn things isnt fluffy so much as powdery. so... fail. maybe next time. hahaha

Hehe

I hope you got the cans cleaned and none got into the driver enclosure.

 

[Jaawa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d$^ /img/forum/go_quote.gif A big thanks for this mod!! I drilled another 2 holes in both cups today, i'm amazed, it's makes huge diffrence, so i will do another 2 in each cup and get HD595 pads to make them more open, for positioning i love this headset, you can hear the things far and almost correctly, some n00bs saying i'm playing with wallhack lol, music sounds really really better after mod, i'm absolutly love my PC350 now !!!

Awesome, there's also the option to go for the PXC 450 pads, which genpatton7 has tested with nice results:

Quote:

Originally Posted by genpatton7 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The PXC 450 earpads just arrived today, they fit perfectly! The material is similar to the that of the D2000 pads, filled with foam and the feel of real leather (edit: that's because they are real leather, filled with neoprene ). They have the same (if not better) isolation as the stock pads and feel supremely comfortable. If you don't mind dropping the $53 + shipping, it'll improve the comfort of the PC 350 considerably. Update: PXC 450 pads definitely isolate more, because of this the bass is brought out even more, drowning out every other frequency and pushing the treble to the far back. I'm going to try to use some dampening material to cut down on the bass and bring the treble out more. Finally finished my dampening tests, went through 3-4 different amounts of cotton balls in the cups until I got the sound just right. The dampening fixed the overwhelming bass problems and balanced the sound. Overall, the sound post-mod with the PXC 450 pads is leaps and bounds better than stock, it has improved bass and upfront acoustics. The PXC 450 pads themselves are super comfortable and do a great job of blocking outside noise. I have recommended this mod to everyone that will listen and I keep getting positive responses. To anyone with overemphasized bass and comfort issues post-mod, the PXC 450 pads and dampening will do the trick.

Btw genpatton7, you should take some pics of your headset, I for one want to see how they look with those pads

I rather like the look of the 595 velour on them,
here are mine once again:

 

[FlKTION]

Hello everyone, about 2 months ago i bought the 350's and was pretty excited but when i got home i was shocked, compared to other "PC-gaming" headsets the sound was very very good, i could hear things I simply could not hear on my PC 161's. BUT as we all know the bass was troubling! At first I thought it must be my settings (i am using a X-FI Platinum card) so I spent about 2 hours tweaking the EQ and other settings, nothing worked.

I took the 350's back. However my 161's cord and pads started falling apart on me and i wanted to get a new pair of phones, I had tried razer products such as the Razer Carcharias, and Piranha and found them lacking (although the Razer Carcharias is not all that bad for a ok gaming set) and the 350's were on sale $60 off although the bass was poor i bought them again as with my gift card i could rationalize the price.

When pushing the phone pads against my head, i could feel good bass at the time i thought perhaps as they adjust to my head it will get better, but then i saw THIS THREAD.

After reading and seeing the positive feedback i decided to drill 2 holes in each. WOW, seriously WOW the best way to describe the difference is that the bass was boxed away (literally) and was trying to punch through and you received the sound of it "trying". No longer! Now with my EQ sitting almost flat on the bass end, the bass still jumps and rumbles to life as i feel it was intended. I will admit i was almost shocked as I usually have to lift the bass on my EQ to really feel it, however i now see that this would only be necessary if i was listening to something encoded poorly etc.

These phones are truly awesome now, worth the price sturdy good isolation power house bass and great highs. The mids on the other hand are somewhat lacking, but can be brought to life perfectly with some fine tuning on your EQ (at least i find).

If you are on the fence, BUY these phones! The mod is easy, safe and can be performed my a hardware noob like myself, just be careful take your time and work slowly with care.

Thank you so much Hero for the mod and also thanks to Jaawa for your findings and images!

 

[Skoobs]

i definitely agree... thanks to those who took the risk and created this mod.

 

[Mastermind]

Hello everybody. I've been reading useful posts here for quite a long and this helped me to buy new sennheisers ie8, for example, but never wrote anything myself. But today I decided to become a regular member and show my appreciation to the job done by Ourfpshero on modding PC350, as this seemingly simple mod gives great results and I'm really impressed!!!

I have PC350 for about 2 months and purchased this headset as a replacement for my Plantronics 350 (what a coincidence

. Not that I was not satisfied with the sound of new Senn, on the contrary, sound was definitely clearer, richer and frequency response was better, the only drawback was less pronounced bass and more mid-highs (I guess this also has to deal with the ear resonance described on this forum before). I equalized the sound to some degree, of course, but only after doing the Hero mod I could see all the potential of 350's.( Indeed I felt myself a hero too modding headset at 2:00 AM and loosing 2 year warranty

Three holes were made with a hot nail, thus eliminating necessity to remove drilled plastics. As a result - very even frequency response, more spacious sound stage, and extra bonus - headset became more open and I felt more comfortable.

So thank you once again for the great job!!! I hope you won't lose wish to discover something new and share your finding with other lovers of good sound.

 

[FlKTION]

Upon further testing I have some results to share. I listen to mainly tech-trance and drum & bass, therefore the bass levels in the music i listen to mainly is naturally high. After extensive testing for a few days I can say that if you listen to bass heavy tunes you want smaller holes.

I made an initial 3 holes, i am not very good with measurements but i can say that they were a little to large (perhaps the size of the tip of a ball point pen?). The bass on the music i listen to was as a result muddled. I closed them up and made 3 more holes, this time using a thumb-tack and the result has been phenomenal, strong kicking bass that snaps proper and does not muddle.

This all might be common knowledge to the more experienced but to those who are new to this, i can tell you it makes a very large difference