Orthodynamic Roundup

[joelpearce]

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So many Ortho's up for sale recently!
 
Could someone please explain where the current T50RP (modded) lies in the Ortho rating chart? I've heard fantastic things about Smeggy's Thunderpants, but reading though the first 50 pages (only a thousand left 

), I'm hearing different things from the Ortho experts here. 

 
I don't know how popular this view is going to be, but I would separate the T50RP from most vintage orthos in terms of overall sound.  Vintage orthos have a unique sound (which is quite special), and while I do really like the T50RP and the Thunderpants, they don't sound like any of the vintage orthos I've tried.
 
 

 

[Kabeer]

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I don't know how popular this view is going to be, but I would separate the T50RP from most vintage orthos in terms of overall sound.  Vintage orthos have a unique sound (which is quite special), and while I do really like the T50RP and the Thunderpants, they don't sound like any of the vintage orthos I've tried.
 
 

I totally agree. The vintage orthos have a different sound to the modern stuff. And whilst maybe not techincally superior, there is something about it (warmth and musciality) that I prefer to any modern stuff.
But definately not every sound is for every person. It all deends what your  own set of ears focus on.

 

[leeperry]

 

Originally Posted by Kabeer /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
The vintage orthos have a different sound to the modern stuff. And whilst maybe not techincally superior, there is something about it (warmth and musciality) that I prefer to any modern stuff.
But definately not every sound is for every person. It all deends what your  own set of ears focus on.

X2. And it takes beefy amps to make vintage orthos sing I think, so trusting other ppl's impressions without knowing what gear they used is highly misleading. I kept reading that the HP-1 was bass shy, but it has far much thicker and percussive deep bass than the T50RP on my Stello Eximus DP-1

 
I often read that a pimped T50RP is 80% of the LCD-2, so the latter prolly won't appeal to me either.
 
I'm also realizing that I mostly listen to 70's music, and this music needs "musical THD" to make me happy...so that means tubes/discrete + vintage orthos I think. I was using a "discrete sounding" DSP on the T50RP that would inject some 70's THD "soul"....it was far better than stock to my ears, but after 3 days of HP-1 use, the T50RP has to go...I've got no use for it anymore: the SS is bland, the deep bass is dull...I'm having far more fun w/ the HP-1 by a long shot. Yes, the trebles are less "HD sounding" but all the rest kills it altogether.
 
The stock shell is pretty annoying, but once I will have rehoused the drivers into an über comfy foster, that's gonna be the ####

 
Now I would like to find a more refined HP-1, but the latter Yam models seem so frigging rare, and when they show up OCD'ed collectors seem to instantly turn them into 4 figures auctions =/

 

[DefectiveAudioComponent]

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Now I would like to find a more refined HP-1, but the latter Yam models seem so frigging rare, and when they show up OCD'ed collectors seem to instantly turn them into 4 figures auctions =/

 
This is why you might feel the need to join team Peerless
Cheap, often great potential, but requires work to get them to sing. I can't promise that you will like it more than your HP1 though of course...
 
(The bass of the Audeze LCD2r1 is hard to beat though, giving a point scored to the new planar dynamics)

 

[leeperry]

Anyway, my point was that "YMMV" is a major understatement when it comes to audiophile gear...talk about learning it the hard way! There's always something better sounding out there, ALWAYS

 
This said, thanks to the relentless ortho ninjas here I've had a slow but steady learning curve and after getting a taste of the ortho sound w/ the T50RP, I now have narrowed down what I want to hear: a beefy discrete source/amp(which I already own) + a vintage ortho(which I crave, even though the HP-1 makes me plenty happy atm..and even more so when it'll be rehoused very soon

).
 
A good example is "Oliver Cheatham - Get Down Saturday Night (Original 12'' Version).flac", this tune is a PRaT killer on the DP-1 + HP-1 combo. It sounds dull to the utmost in comparison on my vastly pimped T50RP. It comes from this 4CD compilation that's only using "studio master quality" source material, the SQ is unbelievable: http://www.liebrand.nl/grand12/1.html
 

This is why you might feel the need to join team Peerless
Cheap, often great potential, but requires work to get them to sing.

 
Thanks for the invite, but how do I join Team Peerless? Another über-rare ortho that's impossible to find?
 
FWIW, I'm willing to trade some stuff/show the green if anyone's got spare vintage orthos(hah, I wish

): http://www.head-fi.org/t/588896/wtb-vintage-orthos-can-trade-for-a-t50rp-mdr-sa5000-earpads

 

[DefectiveAudioComponent]

Quote:

 
Thanks for the invite, but how do I join Team Peerless? Another über-rare ortho that's impossible to find?
 
FWIW, I'm willing to trade some stuff/show the green if anyone's got spare vintage orthos(hah, I wish

): http://www.head-fi.org/t/588896/wtb-vintage-orthos-can-trade-for-a-t50rp-mdr-sa5000-earpads

Well. That is the bad news of course. Each of them are hard to find. But the good news is that there are several to choose from
(If you do find one of them though, then you might find use for those ear pads of yours, since the PMB ear pads are always ruined. If they are the right size, that is.)

 

[leeperry]

and those Peerless are also from the 70's, goodness! The only sources are ebay and the head-fi classifieds I would guess?

 

[wualta]

 
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It all depends what your own set of ears focus on.

And with this opening, I will mount my hobbyhorse very briefly to say once again: It's not so much that we all hear differently-- after all, we can all compare our headphones/recordings/speakers to the same reference-quality source: reality-- it's that we all feel different things when we hear the same thing. It's your emotions that push-pull you (heh) to a certain sound-signature, and though that may/will change with time, it's impossible to deny once you feel the push or pull. Which is why you should never, ever feel you should apologize for liking a particular headphone or amp or song or what have you. K tnx bye
 
 
Quote:

1 )  I kept reading that the HP-1 was bass shy, but it has far much thicker and percussive deep bass than the T50RP...
 
2 )  Now I would like to find a more refined HP-1, but the latter Yam models seem so frigging rare, and when they show up OCD'ed collectors seem to instantly turn them into 4 figures auctions =/

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
3 )  There's always something better sounding out there, ALWAYS

 
4 )  Thanks to the relentless ortho ninjas here, after getting a taste of the ortho sound w/ the T50RP, I now have narrowed down what I want to hear..

 
1 )  The HP-1 is bass-shy-- not the end of the world, because, once damped, the HP-1's bass quality is there in spades, and after all, it's only bass-shy, not bass-free, so you turn up the bass a little and zango, you're rollin'. The T50RP starts off with a much more serious bass handicap for audiophile duty, and I applaud the extraordinary efforts put forth by the T50RP True Believers. Achieving good bass on the T50RP is neither simple nor cheap.
 
2 )  Which later Yamorthos were you thinking about? the YHD series?
 
3 )  This is so dang true, it's... it's.. TRUE. Keeping always firmly in mind that "better" is an infinitely-stretchable term that's subject to all kinds of emotional and mental and autonomic forces wholly outside and beyond your control. "Different" is easy to demonstrate and can even be proved. "Better".. well... 
 
4 )  This is why I always suggest to people who wanna grab the headphone and bust it apart and start modifying it right away that the best thing is to let your ears educate your brain, which takes time. 

 

[leeperry]

 

1 )  The HP-1 is bass-shy-- not the end of the world, because, once damped, the HP-1's bass quality is there in spades, and after all, it's only bass-shy, not bass-free, so you turn up the bass a little and zango, you're rollin'. The T50RP starts off with a much more serious bass handicap for audiophile duty, and I applaud the extraordinary efforts put forth by the T50RP True Believers. Achieving good bass on the T50RP is neither simple nor cheap.
 
2 )  Which later Yamorthos were you thinking about? the YHD series?

1) Oh....well, I've never been a bass head in the first place and the HP-1 hits the spot juuust fine

 
And it's funny that all those bragging ppl who show flawed measurements to make everyone understand that they are willing to fill the cups of their T50RP's with magical cotton balls for 200 quids flat show graphs made using gear that cannot measure lows properly. So much for a good excuse, I'm giggling to no end when I hear the flabby bass of the T50RP...show me all the bs graphs you like, I'll keep giggling

 
2) Dunno, yeah all those supposedly newer/better designs from Yam'...even w/ one driver busted, they go up through the roof on ebay

 

[nick n]

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And with this opening, I will mount my hobbyhorse very briefly to say once again: It's not so much that we all hear differently-- after all, we can all compare our headphones/recordings/speakers to the same reference-quality source: reality-- it's that we all feel different things when we hear the same thing. It's your emotions that push-pull you (heh) to a certain sound-signature, and though that may/will change with time, it's impossible to deny once you feel the push or pull. Which is why you should never, ever feel you should apologize for liking a particular headphone or amp or song or what have you. K tnx bye
 
 
 

may be of further interest to anyone interested.
direct pdf link: http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/clrg/music.pdf
 
A.K.A. "The perception of emotional
expression in music: evidence from
infants, children and adults."PDF
I think it's great anyhow. ( I keep spelling GREAT as GRETA  does this mean I need a germanic girlfriend ??? Always slipping up on that one.hahaha )
If by chance the link dies down the road pm me I saved a copy.
 
 

 

[wualta]

Nick, thanks for that link, though I haven't looked at it yet. Meanwhile, we'll have the West Coast contingent see if Greta Gerwig has plans for the evening.
 
As for the later capital-O Orthos: Ya know, I don't think anyone has ever done the superduper transplant job on a YHD. People tend to like them for what they are and don't want to mod them. Oh, we've had earpad mods and other normal things, but I think the Big YHD Mod has yet to be done. Here's an SFI-sized driver with effectively the same surface area as the T50RP and I don't recall seeing anything as charmingly eccentric as ludoo's little SFI transmission-line computer monitors
 
That said, they sure seem to have retreated from the online-auction block. I've been trying to snag a YHD-3 for at least a couple of years and so far have seen nothing. Of course, I'm limiting my search to North America, but still.. So I feel your frustration.

 

[tzjin]

Could be because the first 50 pages were written as far back as 2005 when the Thunderpants didn't exist.

Oh... I forgot about that.
 
So I guess the vintage Ortho's have some warmth and love in them that the modern ones don't. That makes sense, since I've heard that the newer headphones are often much brighter and more aggressive than those made 20-30 years ago. 
 
Side note: Didn't dbel make a nice enclosure for his YHD-2 out of Padouk? I'm super excited by the potential the wualta belives YHD series have. Now ideas are bouncing around like crazy in my head (aluminum housing with wire mush in back, engraved with pretty designs, padding like Faust2d's). 

 
 

 

[gurubhai]

 
^Yes, Don did transplant a YHD-2 in a wooden enclosure. He also got it measured from Tyll.
 
Side note: Don't worry, your crazy ideas would get damped by themselves by the time you actually find a YHD ortho.

 

[wualta]

I had forgotten about Don's YHD-2 mod, but it's more of a transplant-in-place, a stock YHD with cups and pads added. What I was envisioning was something along the lines of tzjin's idea, only with chrome tailfins.

 

[nickchen]

I've just bought another RP18, a Kapton. That thing has slight deep bass rattle issues on both sides, so I opened the system in order to get rid of the dirt. There wasn't any dirt though, so as I assambled everything again, it kept on rattling on that 33Hz test tone. By chance, I found out that this rattle would vanish when I put some slight pressure on the baffle side. So I got the idea that the diaphragm unit would be sitting too loose in its housing. Hence I fixed it with thin bluetac sausages from both sides to keep it in place, and I also used stonger screws at the places where the stock screw seemed dubious.

 
The result is somewhat peculiar. The rattle has gone completely, but with it, the bass has decreased and presence increased, in a similar manner as if I had strangled it by overdamping. Before, they sounded fine with DT880 pads and the "usual" starter damping scheme, but now, I've got to use O2 pads together with no damping at all. Anyway, it sounds great and provides a real good airyness as well, but to be honest, I've got clue what has happened there. Any ideas from the other ninjas?