The funny truth is - the less damping the better sound. For one year now I don't mod any headphones, leaving them stock or if it really makes sense I always try to find damping scheme that will let the drivers breathe from their backside as much as possible. IMHO using any tapes directly on drivers is like taping air intake or exhaust in a car.
You might get amazing results when "damping" from the ear-side only - finding best pads with right level of sealing and distance from ear.
I would agree with you but for one thing: bass control. You can manipulate the overall frequency response in several ways, but if the diaphragm isn't under control at its [usually upper bass] resonant frequency, the bass will be flabby and blah. This applies mostly to those headphones with a prominent bass hump, like the YH-100, and less to 'phones like the HP-1.
There are always other considerations, and the choice of tradeoff, happily, is ours.
I was just reading one of the treads on tracks for testing bass, and listening to the tracks. I was listening with the T30 and a Sony XB500 that I bought for the pads. The XB500 are awful, but they do have deep bass extension. They make the T30 sound bass wimpy. Of course, some of the songs people are posting, are pretty much nothing but bass.
@scompton : similar experience here. This is of course due to the fact that tapes have a very strong damping effect & moderate reflex properties as well.
I think the tape I used was completely impervious to air so I basically sealed the back of the driver. I now have the YH-100 damped with true micropore and nothing else and they significantly under damped.
I was just reading one of the treads on tracks for testing bass, and listening to the tracks. I was listening with the T30 and a Sony XB500 that I bought for the pads. The XB500 are awful, but they do have deep bass extension. They make the T30 sound bass wimpy. Of course, some of the songs people are posting, are pretty much nothing but bass.
The XB700s will do like 4hz and not break, make any audible harmonics, or other funny noises. You can just barely feel it. Its too bad all that excursion makes them break up into awfulness unless you listen very softly.
I wonder if the LCD-2s can do that. I'm assuming it can, but I didn't have signal generator to test with when I heard them at CanJam so I only got to test down to 20hz with the Heartbeat track on the Open Your Ears Album. Its a shame that there's nothing with that sort of bass extension between the the XB series and the LCD-2.
From driver to back of the cup: One disk of thin dense 100% wool felt -> 1cm of fish foam -> thin 100% wool dens felt again same diameter as the driver -> thick low density 100% wool felt covering the whole back of the cup but not the vent felts.
About closing the holes of the back of driver my explanation is the one sounding simpler to me: closing part of the holes reduces the efficiency inversely respect the frequency. My favorite pattern is a square of tape covering all the center holes leaving only the external rows open and another square in the middle on top of it covering only the internal rows. The middle rows have the biggest LF attenuation.
I'll be putting under extensive test my hp1 to find out what I'm paying for the lunch over the coming week.
The funny truth is - the less damping the better sound. For one year now I don't mod any headphones, leaving them stock or if it really makes sense I always try to find damping scheme that will let the drivers breathe from their backside as much as possible. IMHO using any tapes directly on drivers is like taping air intake or exhaust in a car.
You might get amazing results when "damping" from the ear-side only - finding best pads with right level of sealing and distance from ear.
I would agree with you but for one thing: bass control. You can manipulate the overall frequency response in several ways, but if the diaphragm isn't under control at its [usually upper bass] resonant frequency, the bass will be flabby and blah. This applies mostly to those headphones with a prominent bass hump, like the YH-100, and less to 'phones like the HP-1.
There are always other considerations, and the choice of tradeoff, happily, is ours.
I doubt that things are as simple as in an american movie, there's the good guy, and here's the bad. The sonic system of a HP & its housings & its pads on hand hand, and the personal preferences of the listener on the other hand form a quite complex situation alltogether. You might need much damping in some situations and almost none in others.
I doubt that things are as simple as in an american movie, there's the good guy, and here's the bad. The sonic system of a HP & its housings & its pads on hand hand, and the personal preferences of the listener on the other hand form a quite complex situation alltogether. You might need much damping in some situations and almost none in others.
I listened to both the very open Yahmalux and my tuned original hp1 and both give good results in terms of tonal balance. To me both opening the enclosure back or closing the driver holes have the same effect: reducing the efficiency at LF and therefore better balancing the FR. Still I think the yamhalux has more air and better ss (but keep in min I think that the stock hp1 is too much biased toward the LF).
I will have to compare again my hp1 against EddieE's Yahmalux. What about EddieE? Are you interested? I can also bring my ID1 along.
There used to be a before/after on a vintage T40 here, but it's a 404 now: http://homepage2.nifty.com/hai2audio/P1/phone/t40mod.html
The changes were as drastic as you would expect. I think I posted the pix of those FR ages ago in this very thread, but 1139 pages and a FUBAR search engine aren't going to cut it.
So I somehow managed to snag a pair of Fostex T40v1 (again!) and was thinking of transplanting the drivers (or just tossing them up for trades like last time). For those of you who've done it before, did you cut out the entire plastic driver housing or did you mount the magnets/driver into a new assembly?
Was it anything in particular that you were interested in measuring Tyll? I am sure we could put a reasonable sample together for you to measure - win win as far as I can see.
So I somehow managed to snag a pair of Fostex T40v1 (again!) and was thinking of transplanting the drivers (or just tossing them up for trades like last time). For those of you who've done it before, did you cut out the entire plastic driver housing or did you mount the magnets/driver into a new assembly?
I have been tempted to play with the T40v1 for a while now. Anything in particular that you were looking for that may be traded for? PM me and we can chat further.
Heck yeah! Except I have all of my customs taken down for the moment while I change cables around. I could probably let the modded RP18s, tweaked Smeggy TPs, and modded Kenwood KH-83s go out to play in different weeks. I could also send a T20v1 along. I'll drop you a PM once I have a few things done, but I'm waiting on a cable that should have shipped Saturday.
I really want to see how close the overall curves look with my tunings. I'm curious how well I do across many different drivers. In theory they should all be similar since they were modded for my tastes on my system.
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