smeggy
Member of the Trade: ThunderpantsTP1
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2004
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It's always difficult to explain what it is I'm hearing, but truly open... ie, undamped or extremely light like the LCD or HE is what I'm getting at. The old NAD is terrible in the open and the little padding they had on the driver didn't do much as it was probably an acoustic lens but in it's native state they sound pretty awful to me. I guess I should have prefaced by saying all that stuff was bad 'to me'. I still have the NAD drivers here on the table teasing me. I think there is some awesome in there but like Yammy drivers, I've yet to succeed in getting what I like out of them.
I have very specific likes and dislikes with these various drivers so I really shouldn't generalize like I did in my comments. The loading I'm referring to is air coupling. There are certain drivers which need close coupling (high loading) and others that need less. I'm not an audio or physics expert so you'll need to excuse my poor choice of wording to describe what my various tests are telling me. Of course I may be barking up the wrong tree in some cases as all I'm going on is my extensive tests and trials which are hardly scientific but all I have, given my limited knowledge. I make no bones of the fact that I am frequently academically challenged and am a very long way from being an EE.
Anyway, people were asking about the fostex T50RP in the open. To me sounds muddy, ill defined, plasticy and boomy. When I say 'plasticy' the way that describes is best is that the sound has a similar sound quality to tapping the bottom of a plastic bucket, if you tap the NAD or fostex drivers you'll hear a similar sound and that comes through when played.
In the open It lacks the solidity and clarity of sound the LCD2 has in spades. Close the back and add some damping and they can sound quite similar. The Native T50RP is a nice phone that improves drastically with some work. Lets face it, it has to be of a certain standard to allow it to become what I feel is an awesome phone. One of the big problems I have with them is their shallow ear opening which squishes my ears. I don't know about everyone else but if my ears are flattened my hearing response is drastically affected, like it kinks my ear canals or something. It took me quite a while to figure that out until I decided to do tests on my ears as well as phones. Now I always give them enough room to avoid compression. It has the added bonus of angling the drivers as a result. This has less effect than bending my ears flat though, so for me the angling is a secondary advantage, keeping my ear canals normal was my primary goal. It's also more comfy for me.
We all like different things and what I consider awesome may well sound bleh to others. Personally I've yet to get the Yamaha drivers, of the numerous ones I've heard, to sound good for my tastes but I'm still working on it. Many others love them to bits so I'm assuming one day I will too. I hope some of this made some sense to somebody.
I have very specific likes and dislikes with these various drivers so I really shouldn't generalize like I did in my comments. The loading I'm referring to is air coupling. There are certain drivers which need close coupling (high loading) and others that need less. I'm not an audio or physics expert so you'll need to excuse my poor choice of wording to describe what my various tests are telling me. Of course I may be barking up the wrong tree in some cases as all I'm going on is my extensive tests and trials which are hardly scientific but all I have, given my limited knowledge. I make no bones of the fact that I am frequently academically challenged and am a very long way from being an EE.
Anyway, people were asking about the fostex T50RP in the open. To me sounds muddy, ill defined, plasticy and boomy. When I say 'plasticy' the way that describes is best is that the sound has a similar sound quality to tapping the bottom of a plastic bucket, if you tap the NAD or fostex drivers you'll hear a similar sound and that comes through when played.
In the open It lacks the solidity and clarity of sound the LCD2 has in spades. Close the back and add some damping and they can sound quite similar. The Native T50RP is a nice phone that improves drastically with some work. Lets face it, it has to be of a certain standard to allow it to become what I feel is an awesome phone. One of the big problems I have with them is their shallow ear opening which squishes my ears. I don't know about everyone else but if my ears are flattened my hearing response is drastically affected, like it kinks my ear canals or something. It took me quite a while to figure that out until I decided to do tests on my ears as well as phones. Now I always give them enough room to avoid compression. It has the added bonus of angling the drivers as a result. This has less effect than bending my ears flat though, so for me the angling is a secondary advantage, keeping my ear canals normal was my primary goal. It's also more comfy for me.We all like different things and what I consider awesome may well sound bleh to others. Personally I've yet to get the Yamaha drivers, of the numerous ones I've heard, to sound good for my tastes but I'm still working on it. Many others love them to bits so I'm assuming one day I will too. I hope some of this made some sense to somebody.
