Ok, I should have explained the mods a bit. I sealed the back vents entirely with pleather fabric and then lined the fabric with modeling clay, so basically they are fully sealed. Then I drilled a bass port on the bottom and sealed up the cable entry points despite the driver housings being leaky already around the yoke hinges and whatnot. It's not so much sub-bass extension I'm worried about, it's the mid-bass bloom that does me in. The mid-bass just never seems to STOP. I'm debating if it's worth $80 to get some Angel Hair shipped my way. I have a feeling if I just stuffed the right amount of Angel Hair in there it would damp the mid-bass enough to make them TRULY listenable for me.
The biggest difference for me in cutting out the mid-bass was removing all the stock damping... but I realize this is basically irreversible, so I can't fully recommend it.
Also, adding a spacer-ring of felt/thermolam/(could also be arctic bamboo) under the pads really helped bring up the sub-bass to smooth out the bass response.
It's difficult to recommend anything since I have no idea what kind of results you're getting, or what results you will get in the Sennheiser frame.
Also, I don't think Twaron Angel Hair is the only possible material that gives these results.
I'm sure similar results can be achieved with other similar fillers. I think the key here is to 'overstuff' the cups... just put in a lot more than you think you need.
The biggest difference for me in cutting out the mid-bass was removing all the stock damping... but I realize this is basically irreversible, so I can't fully recommend it.
Also, adding a spacer-ring of felt/thermolam/(could also be arctic bamboo) under the pads really helped bring up the sub-bass to smooth out the bass response.
It's difficult to recommend anything since I have no idea what kind of results you're getting, or what results you will get in the Sennheiser frame.
Also, I don't think Twaron Angel Hair is the only possible material that gives these results.
I'm sure similar results can be achieved with other similar fillers. I think the key here is to 'overstuff' the cups... just put in a lot more than you think you need.
I made these headphones years ago and gifted them to my brother-in-law who never really used them and just gave them back to me. I BELIEVE stock damping is in tact but I poked holes in it with a needle. That's based off memory.
Yes, yes. I received some Twaron Angel hair as a gift and used this to fill enclosure originally, but I didn't use enough, apparently. Just now I stuffed Cellucotton rayon batting in behind the Angel Hair and it sounds better, imo.
Haha, reading through this thread has been a good refresher on the tools we use to fine-tune sound.
Sealed cup. Super damped bass is interesting but now there is a 2kHz hump. Not sure if its overdamp or reflection. Didnt expect to work anyway - just curious. You can see the micropore left from yesterday’s experiment which sounded good to me, but Id rather avoid using micropore since its been unrecommended (was it you GREQ?).
@GREQ Ive been wanting try modern T50rp again. Id remove stock driver damping as a start. Instead damp cups and grills. Second, would want a TH500RP - the enclosure looks less intrusive. See that other friendly forum T60rp thread for modding without stock damping. In regards to pad spacers, I do believe thicker pads bring more v-shaped sound, but at the same time I do believe you end up with some detail loss in exchange and more opportunity for ear chamber reflection depending on pad material.
@khbaur330162 YH-100 despite its extra attributes sounded too trebly for me. Treble ringing. Check that other friendly forum for more info.
I just noticed intermittent connection loss on T30 when listening and moving head around. Oh no.
For my T-X0, removing the stock, rear white screen helped a lot in increasing upper treble for me along with my other mods. I’m not sure if that helped with taming midbass. The bass I have now isn’t bloated, it’s at the level of my Sennheiser HD580 (I’ve been modding most of my headphones by ear and using this headphone as a reference). Subbass isn’t booming but is present and a bit rolled off. Will measure once I get my EARs and figure out how to use it.
@GREQ I didnt know that T40 had a vintage version using the old circular drivers. I learned today because one was just posted on ebay. I still want to do modern vesion TH500RP. Want a more open style. Just like with T30: sealed with tape sounded awful, and semi-sealed (micropore) sounded too closed-in and dry(?). Back to full open with just a 2lb foam layer. Might see if T30 will fit Beyer enclosure. Will try then post pics later.
It definitely does work and it works very well.
I don't have a link to where I've seen this done though.
It's actually on my to-do list, since I have a spare DT990 frame I will use for this. I just havn't got around to it yet.
The chosen sacrifice DT880 250ohm. Doesnt sound horrible actually. I think there have been revisions over the years so I think some of the prejudice is not fair. They lean bright trebley, but its a pretty smooth transition so less offensive. Pretty flat bass thru mids. Good bass extension, just sounds a bit flat - undynamic. Disappointed by comfort though actually. Headband needs some bending. Maxxed out extension. Hot spot at top.
The chosen sacrifice DT880 250ohm. Doesnt sound horrible actually. I think there have been revisions over the years so I think some of the prejudice is not fair. They lean bright trebley, but its a pretty smooth transition so less offensive. Pretty flat bass thru mids. Good bass extension, just sounds a bit flat - undynamic. Disappointed by comfort though actually. Headband needs some bending. Maxxed out extension. Hot spot at top.
Removing stock damping on T50RP reduced mid-bass bloat considerably allowing me to turn volume up some which seemed to push mids and treble forward. Still wasn't right. Added another layer of Arctic Bamboo and now they sound decent. Wow. Thanks guys for the help, I never would have thought to remove stock damping. There's just a hint of sibilance with some songs, and bass is still maybe too much and not really as detailed as my YH-100. Bass texture on YH-100 is impeccable to a fault with poor recordings; T50RP's trod on without noticing.
Ive already rolled a few and got decent results actually. Opened the cups and found tons of damping behind and in front of driver. The thickest densest felt puck Ive ever seen... and in front of the driver. How to make our headphone sound better? Mute it
Hope I'm not just rambling here. This is random and has little to do with vintage planars, but I find it interesting, hence my efforts, and this is probably where it's most relevant?
New DIY planar I made today. I believe this is a cloned Sundara headband made with cheaper materials and they came with the wood driver housings, too (wood feels cheap, metal is cheap, too, the pads that came with the baffles were not terrible but also kinda garbage at the same time). Feels pretty solid in hand, though, especially after adding the weight of the drivers, they feel totally normal and very comfy. Really, really old Stax SR-007 pads stolen from an old project. If you look where the yoke attaches to the left driver housing you'll see I replaced some cracked wood with white epoxy putty... I had to use a router to open up the driver housing openings to accept the drivers and I was going too fast (I'm really not that experienced with wood working, but I recognize my mistake, I think, the second one went much much better) and I shattered the left driver housing completely in half, tiny bits flew everywhere unrecoverable and I couldn't find them all to glue it back together so... now they're ugly...
Oversized, rectangular Chinese planars.
Was going to install rivets into the wood enclosures to screw these drivers into place, but had to route out the driver housing walls so thin that (half the reason why one shattered) there's no room left for rivets anymore. I bought 100mm driver housing model, you'd probably need 105mm for future builds... unless... Luckily, I opened up the driver housings to just the right size that the drivers can be friction set into place! This made it a breeze to tune the drivers because the cable is also temporary and was just hanging out, so very easy to remove drivers and do whatever needed. Maybe it's best to friction set drivers instead of buying 105mm housings? I applied Sorbothane to driver rears in a few spots, filled wood housings with Cellucotton (my Twaron Angel Hair substitute... Idk how good it is, but it IS better than nothing), and applied two layers of Arctic Bamboo damping. I gifted my RP-18's to a very good friend of mine so I can't directly compare to those. Overall, darker than EQ'ed YH-1's and YH-100's, but I wouldn't really label them as dark, they sound pretty neutral to me. Waiting on minidsp EARS so will probably post some measurements once they arrive and I figure everything out.
At first, listening to orchestral, I thought their center image was unusually close and the soundstage took a step back as it went out to the sides, but maybe these just sound slightly different than my other headphones because I'm getting used to them and don't notice anymore. Bass doesn't have crazy impact (I've never heard an Audeze to compare) but there is more midbass than RP-18 from memory as well as both my Yamahas, even with EQ. I think T50RP might slam a little harder, but the bass on this is coming from a ~90mm planar versus 46mm or whatever the T50RP is, so it sounds different for sure. I didn't think they sounded exceptionally detailed at first, but then I actually heard something brand new -clear as day- in a song I've heard numerous times, it was like crackling and cutting out faintly, I thought I broke something in my rig or these new drivers were faulty, but then I switched headphones and sure enough, it's there... crappy audio file... These are stupid easy to drive, my Dethonray Honey H1 is maxed out on LOW GAIN. Low gain on this unit is like... super low? Never experienced an amp with this low of a gain before. My ER4XR's use high gain...
How do they sound? I built these to compete with my RP-18's and based off memory I feel they definitely do. I've never heard a Sundara or Takstar HF580, but those are probably what these would compete against if they were sold online? I'll have to hear a Sundara someday, definitely interested in how these stack up. I owned a Monolith M1060 briefly (open back model, version 1 if there are versions as I got in on those really early) and these crush those. The M1060 sounded honkey to me, their tonality was not enjoyable. These are very enjoyable with minimal effort. No EQ preset, listening to them flat. Only listened for a few hours due to obligations, but color me mildly impressed! I was sort of aiming for the moon with these, just running on a hunch that these drivers would be good, haha, but I'm not really disappointed by how they sound at all. Enjoying them so far. Glad I built them, despite the headache of shattering that left driver housing. That was like the first thing I did and I was thinking, "This is not going so well." Glad it was just a hiccup. The glue I used to repair the wood was new, I'd never used it before, but it dried in like... 30 seconds?!?!?! Was amazing. It smells like super glue and bonds skin instantly just like it, too, but bonds wood very well.
This is the frequency response supplied by online vendor, if it can be trusted at all, haha:
Here's a vendor supplied photo of the diaphragm, not really sure if that looks good to all of you, but it piqued my interest well enough for the price:
T-X0. Never really liked the sound of these stock, but could not part with them since the serial # corresponded to my birthday. With my current mods, they’re keepers imo.
You can do a few things to make the graphs more informative.
Starting measurements at 10Hz wouldn't hurt. Tyll's innerfidelity graphs also all started at 10Hz.
This can give a lot of into about the headphones ultra-sub bass capabilities, which is a strong characteristic of some headphones.
Even though you can't hear it, you definitely can feel it.
Also change the horizontal and vertical scales.
Vertical: 50-120 SPL
Horizontal: 10-20,000Hz
• This will cut out unnecessary information and make your graphs look less 'flat' and unnaturally neutral, making it easier to read the differences.
You can do a few things to make the graphs more informative.
Starting measurements at 10Hz wouldn't hurt. Tyll's innerfidelity graphs also all started at 10Hz.
This can give a lot of into about the headphones ultra-sub bass capabilities, which is a strong characteristic of some headphones.
Even though you can't hear it, you definitely can feel it.
Also change the horizontal and vertical scales.
Vertical: 50-120 SPL
Horizontal: 10-20,000Hz
• This will cut out unnecessary information and make your graphs look less 'flat' and unnaturally neutral, making it easier to read the differences.
Thanks GREQ for tips! I perused you github page over the weekend btw. Great site and quite informative (side note my MDR-CD1000 has a bass severe roll off vs your CD1700). That’s a good point about feeling subbass frequencies. I’m in the process of redoing measurements from 10 Hz. So far I’ve done the Fostex T-X0 modded and Fostex T20V1 modded. I’ll post both overlaid together sometime today.
Hope I'm not just rambling here. This is random and has little to do with vintage planars, but I find it interesting, hence my efforts, and this is probably where it's most relevant?
New DIY planar I made today. I believe this is a cloned Sundara headband made with cheaper materials and they came with the wood driver housings, too (wood feels cheap, metal is cheap, too, the pads that came with the baffles were not terrible but also kinda garbage at the same time). Feels pretty solid in hand, though, especially after adding the weight of the drivers, they feel totally normal and very comfy. Really, really old Stax SR-007 pads stolen from an old project. If you look where the yoke attaches to the left driver housing you'll see I replaced some cracked wood with white epoxy putty... I had to use a router to open up the driver housing openings to accept the drivers and I was going too fast (I'm really not that experienced with wood working, but I recognize my mistake, I think, the second one went much much better) and I shattered the left driver housing completely in half, tiny bits flew everywhere unrecoverable and I couldn't find them all to glue it back together so... now they're ugly...
Oversized, rectangular Chinese planars.
Was going to install rivets into the wood enclosures to screw these drivers into place, but had to route out the driver housing walls so thin that (half the reason why one shattered) there's no room left for rivets anymore. I bought 100mm driver housing model, you'd probably need 105mm for future builds... unless... Luckily, I opened up the driver housings to just the right size that the drivers can be friction set into place! This made it a breeze to tune the drivers because the cable is also temporary and was just hanging out, so very easy to remove drivers and do whatever needed. Maybe it's best to friction set drivers instead of buying 105mm housings? I applied Sorbothane to driver rears in a few spots, filled wood housings with Cellucotton (my Twaron Angel Hair substitute... Idk how good it is, but it IS better than nothing), and applied two layers of Arctic Bamboo damping. I gifted my RP-18's to a very good friend of mine so I can't directly compare to those. Overall, darker than EQ'ed YH-1's and YH-100's, but I wouldn't really label them as dark, they sound pretty neutral to me. Waiting on minidsp EARS so will probably post some measurements once they arrive and I figure everything out.
At first, listening to orchestral, I thought their center image was unusually close and the soundstage took a step back as it went out to the sides, but maybe these just sound slightly different than my other headphones because I'm getting used to them and don't notice anymore. Bass doesn't have crazy impact (I've never heard an Audeze to compare) but there is more midbass than RP-18 from memory as well as both my Yamahas, even with EQ. I think T50RP might slam a little harder, but the bass on this is coming from a ~90mm planar versus 46mm or whatever the T50RP is, so it sounds different for sure. I didn't think they sounded exceptionally detailed at first, but then I actually heard something brand new -clear as day- in a song I've heard numerous times, it was like crackling and cutting out faintly, I thought I broke something in my rig or these new drivers were faulty, but then I switched headphones and sure enough, it's there... crappy audio file... These are stupid easy to drive, my Dethonray Honey H1 is maxed out on LOW GAIN. Low gain on this unit is like... super low? Never experienced an amp with this low of a gain before. My ER4XR's use high gain...
How do they sound? I built these to compete with my RP-18's and based off memory I feel they definitely do. I've never heard a Sundara or Takstar HF580, but those are probably what these would compete against if they were sold online? I'll have to hear a Sundara someday, definitely interested in how these stack up. I owned a Monolith M1060 briefly (open back model, version 1 if there are versions as I got in on those really early) and these crush those. The M1060 sounded honkey to me, their tonality was not enjoyable. These are very enjoyable with minimal effort. No EQ preset, listening to them flat. Only listened for a few hours due to obligations, but color me mildly impressed! I was sort of aiming for the moon with these, just running on a hunch that these drivers would be good, haha, but I'm not really disappointed by how they sound at all. Enjoying them so far. Glad I built them, despite the headache of shattering that left driver housing. That was like the first thing I did and I was thinking, "This is not going so well." Glad it was just a hiccup. The glue I used to repair the wood was new, I'd never used it before, but it dried in like... 30 seconds?!?!?! Was amazing. It smells like super glue and bonds skin instantly just like it, too, but bonds wood very well.
This is the frequency response supplied by online vendor, if it can be trusted at all, haha:
Here's a vendor supplied photo of the diaphragm, not really sure if that looks good to all of you, but it piqued my interest well enough for the price:
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
