Extending the driver frame? I think Ive seen that before by mrspeakers? I think he made it all specially rounded or something for less diffraction or some other concept beyond my very basic understandings.
If I had a 3D printer things would get crazy. Maybe for xmas.
Basically the plan is to damp the driver but sharing the load evenly throughout the cup instead of “sealed” right behind driver. Never tried it before, what noticeable effect if any? My unsophisticated ears cant tell a difference so far other than tone from underdamping effect.
Extending the driver frame? I think Ive seen that before by mrspeakers? I think he made it all specially rounded or something for less diffraction or some other concept beyond my very basic understandings.
If I had a 3D printer things would get crazy. Maybe for xmas.
Basically the plan is to damp the driver but sharing the load evenly throughout the cup instead of “sealed” right behind driver. Never tried it before, what noticeable effect if any? My unsophisticated ears cant tell a difference so far other than tone from underdamping effect.
You can use ur hands? Get some high density foam and different thickness. They work like chambers that hold the air pressure. It could theoretically effect positively to the bass.
You can use ur hands? Get some high density foam and different thickness. They work like chambers that hold the air pressure. It could theoretically effect positively to the bass.
That is the method Ill be using. Filling entire cavity with specced foam, finding the right density / airflow. Source from Foamfactory or McMaster-Carr.
But first I want to see what happens isolating front and rear waves at this junction here.:
The leaky driver baffle leaks air into this narrow cavity where the earpads and gimbal mount. Its then sealed off by this medium density foam ring. Wonder what higher density or complete seal will do exactly.
Or just sealing front from rear at driver baffle? No idea in theory which might be better. Im going to guess sealing driver baffle is better and leaving front alone for some possible venting. Or they are equivalent enough for my ears? Will test both.
But first I want to see what happens isolating front and rear waves at this junction here.:
The leaky driver baffle leaks air into this narrow cavity where the earpads and gimbal mount. Its then sealed off by this medium density foam ring. Wonder what higher density or complete seal will do exactly.
Hi Philimon, if you seal the cavity and using higher density foam. The base will increase tremendously, i used this technique for all my modded T50 RPs when they need base. You can use pax-mate to seal them and make it easy remove if you want less base.
Bass is not the problem, the little YHD's produce bass down into infinity for me, it's the midrange recession and honkiness. Yours look great. Dunno. Maybe it's the driver distance from the ear or something.
As soon as I removed stock filter paper on T50RP's they sounded a lot better, imho, but I immediately threw damping behind them so never really heard them undamped.
Ok, so I've been busy with 55mm Yamaha's... swapping pads, mainly listening to YH-100's because whoa. I didn't think it made a big difference before but it really does; clarity, midrange timbre, harshness... Here are the measurements:
Ok, so "Flat" and "Angle" are both Brainwavz sheepskin pads for ATH-M50, I believe, or similar headphone. "Stock" is obviously the stock pads, but I shoved solid cell foam behind the front and backs of the pad to lift it up couple mm's. I like the Brainwavz Flat pads, they have best tonality and detail/clarity is slightly better than Stock pads to my ears, makes them @_@. I think bass is better too on Flat pads than stock, cleaner. It was hard to match the measurements because I level matched everything at 300Hz before measurement but if I line up the graphs at 300Hz they look way way different. I bought some MDR-ZX1000 earpads to check out, hopefully those are even better than the flat pads. AFAIK the ZX1000 pads I bought are genuine leather and look a little more padded than stock pads so maybe goldilocks of ear pads, maybe flat pads are already there, Idk, these are so good with the flat pads. I love the neutrality, extension, clarity, imaging, it's all there, better than YH-1's now by far. Too bad YH-100's sell for so much. Must re-acquire RP-18's for comparisonnnnn, haha. RP-18's sounded clearer to me than even YH-100's, I wonder if the paxmate treatment solved that issue or what. Never got to measure RP-18's. Sad day of realization.
Here's Chinese Planar vs YH-100:
Pretty similar... Chinese planars actually sound a little washed out and not as clear as YH-100's now. How is this happening? Dang...
Tuning TH500RP for more bass makes the headphone sound more closed and the less I like it. As a closed phone I prefer EMU. Semi-open I prefer THX00 with TH500RP cups. Both phones sound more dynamic with more even tone. Maybe I dont have the skills to mod - never did. Will sell soon after a few more attempts.
Here is the original post I made about them, I believe. They use Alibaba planar magnetic drivers, Aliexpress frames and cups which is sort of like a Sundara headband clone. Stax SR-007 earpads.
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:
How do you reseat T50RP diaphragm? I took out all the screws but there were clips or something holding everything together and I couldn't get multiple clips undone at same time to free it? How do you open this driver? I have bass imbalance, I wanna see if I can fix it.
How do you reseat T50RP diaphragm? I took out all the screws but there were clips or something holding everything together and I couldn't get multiple clips undone at same time to free it? How do you open this driver? I have bass imbalance, I wanna see if I can fix it.
I just measured the YH-100's without tying my belt around it. Here is the result.
That's the average of three measurement trials. Anyone who says the center pinched ortho's can't have bass in circumaural enclosure haven't done proper testing or made a mistake I think. YH-100's reach into deepest registers with NORMAL headphone clamping force, absolutely no trickery. I just needed to seal off the backwave from frontwave and use earpads that seal around the EARS baffle screws. I EQ the bass with 4dB bass shelf into and possibly beyond T50RP territory.
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Must re-acquire RP-18's for comparisonnnnn, haha. RP-18's sounded clearer to me than even YH-100's, I wonder if the paxmate treatment solved that issue or what. Never got to measure RP-18's. Sad day of realization.
