Love my Aivas and have recently started tweaking with Equalizer APO in Windows. Any suggested settings to adjust for some of the minor issues people are having? Which ranges should I adjust to bring the treble down a little and bring up the recessed mids? I don't want to completely change the U shaped curve, but do want to improve the already amazing sound signature.
Also, one side of my headband seems to slip a bit. Is there a way to tighten it?
Here's a list of the things I did to solve all those things you addressed:
1. Bought a pair of these pads:
They look and feel a whole lot like ZMF Universe pads, found them in amazon for 35USD.
2. I tried several dampening materials both in front and behind the driver:
Dampening in front of the driver mostly tuned down the highs significantly. The black thing is rubber foam, while the white one is...regular foam 1/8" thick. The Rubber Foam damped the highs the most, to the point it sounded muffled. The one with the coarsely cut 1" hole did all right in dampening the highs without muffling and bring up the bass a bit. The material that I'm currently using in front of the driver is felt:
This one does an excellent job at taming down the really upper high frequencies, while leaving the mids mostly intact. Compared to the rubber foam and the regular foam, the felt didn't seem to muffle the details, felt overall has nicer...timbre compared to the foams. I've been using that pink felt ever since. Another effect of the felt is that it brought up the mid bass a notch, without losing detail in the mids. Maybe with black felt the effect would be more pronounced...
3. After that I added some more felt to the back grills, I also tested with regular foam and rubber foam, with holes and whatnot. At the end I decided to use felt on the back grill as well instead of leaving it alone. I just preferred the sound with felt on the girll.
4. One last thing I did was adding a "gasket" to help seal the front and rear back cavities better. My logic for that was based on this article: https://homebrewheadphones.com/design/detailed-design/
The result was an immediate and very welcomed boost to the lower frequencies, without becoming bloated. They aren't bass monsters, but they certainly aren't bass shy anymore. In fact, so far it's the best bass I've had on a pair of headphones (headphones I have owned/owned, not listened to...I certainly like the bass better on these jury-rigged Aivas than on the LCD-2C I managed to listen once)
5. The last thing about the headband slipping. I went full brute force with it:
Please remove the headband from the headphone before attempting to bend it, or you'll very likely break something.
I did two bends, the first one to prevent from slipping beyond that point. That is my preferred position. The second one is right where the headband connects to the headphone, it's like a 70-80 degree bend. I did that so the earpads could seal better bellow my ears when it rested on my jaw. The geometry of the stock Aiva heaband combined with the bigger earpads, created too little pressure when resting in my jaw; bellow my ears, and was losing seal and bass. That little mod makes the headband exert a more even pressure around my ears giving me a more consistent seal.
Those are all the things I did. These headphones are detail monsters with a really nice timbre and a solid bass signature; at least on my gear and with my modifications. I think I can get more detail out of these with a better DAC. I'll get back when I get my gnarly claws on an ADI-2.
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