Sextetts in the house! now what?

[HFat]

It's a late production apparently. They're in poor condition... they need a retermination badly and could probably use new elastics. It sounds like there's a channel imbalance... I hope that's due to the poor connections at the plug.
I'm not fully sold on the sound so far (when comparing to a modern flagship dynamic, my fave being Beyer's) but it's definitely a good deal considering I paid about $25 shipped. There's something weird and edgy about the treble... is that because the foam has disintegrated? The sweet AKG mids (think K501) are not quite there either... these Sextetts sound quite raw. All in all, toe-tapping cans. First impressions, IMHO and all of course.

Anyway, the main point of this thread is that I'd like guidance as to what to do with them particularly with regards to pads and to whatever's inside the housing.
I've got a K271S I could cannibalize for parts... anything worth fitting on the Sextetts?
Do any kind of velour pads sound decent with these (I've got spare K271S and DT880 pads)?
I've seen a reference to foam that was would go under the pads but that seems weird.
Now, about the housing... is it safe to open it (I don't want to have to resolder stuff for the time being)? Is it important to clean the mess I gather I'll probably find inside and to fit fresh foam in there?

I noticed some quite loud crackling when there's a glitch in a recording, with track transitions and such... what could explain this? Could this possibly be caused by bad connections (like I said, the cable is badly needs reterminating)?

Anything I should listen through these or anything I should listen for by the way?
Room ambience (reverbs and such) and many string instruments sound nice so far. Vicente Amigo sounds great if unrealistic for example. Tabla have a cool sound as well... percussions in general are rather realistic and nicely hard-hitting actually compared to more well-behaved cans.

This makes me want to hunt down 240DF... this will never end.

EDIT: oh yeah, and they're not sounding too good with busy music so far. I listen to a lot of chamber-type music so that's not a fatal flaw as far as I'm concerned.

 

[003]

Hmm sounds like they are in bad shape and could need more parts other than the basic pads/foam/elastics... It would be great if you could get some pictures posted here, I could tell you much better what needs to be done. Here are just the basics that need attention:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showpo...29&postcount=9

It sounds like either there is dirt in the driver housings (most likely) or a driver is shot.

Also, you will want just a whole recable ... the stock cable is a piece of crap, and I don't even believe in cables, it is that bad.

 

[HFat]

I don't think the drivers are shot. They sound better than a lot of the cans which get recommended here without any mods/repair... when the right channel doesn't cut out that is (damn dying plug!). My "Made in West Germany" DT990s sounded a good bit weirder "stock".

So I'll have to open them... how safe is that? Anything to be careful about?

What pictures would be useful? An outside look at the driver cover (whatever... that thing in the middle) and the radiators?

 

[003]

Pictures of the headband, the drivers, back and front of earcups, where the headband connects to the earcups, anything that you can get a reasonable picture of would be nice, actually

You can open them but do be careful. You know how right?

 

[HFat]

No... but I guess there's a manual somewhere.

I'll try to take pics tomorrow although I don't see the point. What could possibly be wrong with the headband aside from the elastics? The sound doesn't seem to be very sensitive to pressure and positioning (with my head and pads anyway) compared to other cans.

 

[003]

There are in many cases rips in the headband near where it connects with the earcups. It would also show the condition of the earpads, and if possible a shot of the inside of the earcup (as best you can) would be nice to see.

Trust me they are extremely sensitive to earpads, I tried with different ones before (leather beyers) and the sound of my late production turned into a dark, bass overpowered fart cannon. Even if you have stock earpads, but they are brittle that also changes the sound.

Well to open them, you need to take something like a hobby knife, or other similar flat item, and very carefully pry off the name plates on both of the earcups. There is a little notch where you can slip the knife under. Do your best not to bend them as you will want to reuse them. Under them will be a screw, unscrew it and take off the plastic cap. Depending on which side you open first, when you take off the plastic cap there will either be 2 or 4 wires to desolder (very easy though). Remember where they go. Once desoldered, there is a large brass screw (the other screw you unscrewed actually screws into this screw), unscrew it and with any the headband will detach from the earcup, and then you should be able to simply take off the back of the earcup (the part with the silver ring), exposing the inside of the earcup. The swiveling parts inside snap in and out, you should see how that works, just be careful. You will also be able to snap off the main body of the earcup with some effort, it snaps in and out but can be tricky. This will leave just the baffle/driver/radiators. From here you may clean or do as you like

Also it may be a good idea to take off the grille and clean as best you can under it, although apparently some grilles do not come off (they are stuck on). The foam inside the earcup will be a real mess and you should just throw that out.

 

[HFat]

Thanks for the description... it sounds like work and I'll need to borrow someone's soldering gear so this will wait. I want to reterminate this thing before doing anything else involving soldering... anyone knows where to find nice plugs like the ones that AKG and Beyer have on their modern 'phones? Anyone willing to sell me a couple?

I've already cleaned the outside (under the grille and stuff) although I wasn't very thorough. The grille came off easily.

 

[003]

All right ... post back here if you need more help. What are you amping them with, btw? Your statement about not being good with busy music confuses me a bit -- mine sound their best with metal, rock, electric and acoustic guitar. And I mean, REALLY good. They produce the best electric guitar I've ever heard from ANY headphone. Which leads me to believe either they are not being amped properly or that they need serious work, or both. The bit you said about a channel imbalance was strange, not sure why that would be.

 

[HFat]

Keep in mind I didn't listen to them much. And sure, they don't sound as good as they could if only because of the lack of foam*. There's also going to be differences between Sextetts and between tastes... not to mention vocabulary.
For me, busy music is stuff like death metal (many instruments playing without much breathing space)... which didn't sound so good on these so far mainly due to lack of separation and poor soundstage (tri-blobbish much like Senns). Electric guitars need not be part of a busy ensemble. In any case, I wasn't so impressed with them compared to acoustic guitars, oudhs, sarods and similar instruments which all sounded interesting to great (if a little weird like they'd been excessively close-miked or something).

I don't believe amplification is going to make a big difference to me but, again, I haven't had the opportunity to try them with much gear. I mostly used whatever's integrated into my soundcard... I guess I'm simply not an audiophile.

*has anyone experimented with putting some kind of material (such as foam) to control the treble a bit between or over the radiators? A lot of headphones have foam in front of the drivers including AKGs and it looks like there used to be some stuff over the structure in between the radiators.

 

[003]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFat /img/forum/go_quote.gif I mostly used whatever's integrated into my soundcard... I guess I'm simply not an audiophile.

The Sextetts are 600 ohms

Most sound cards are designed to handle a load of 16 to 32 ohms! They are, without any shadow of a doubt, being severely underpowered. The crackling you hear is probably clipping from the sound card being over loaded, and my guess is that the channel imbalance also stems from this!

What the sextetts need is a LOT of voltage swing (high impedance needs lots of voltage, low impedance needs lots of current). Voltage is most effortlessly delivered by a good tube amp, as tubes are by nature a voltage gain device. Maybe look into one of the darkvoice amps, they are pretty affordable, by head-fi standards anyway

 

[HFat]

Like I said, I'm not an audiophile: more volts isn't better to my ears.
16 or 32 ohms is trouble if you don't have a good amp or at least something designed to drive such loads (I suspect my soundcard isn't). 600 ohms is indeed a bit high for modern gear but at least it'll easily sound good if not loud.
I've tried the Sextetts through a very beefy solid state integrated amp just in case... I guess it sounds a bit better than my soundcard's amp but then again it also sounds good with other AKGs because the coloration is a good match. It sounds much like my soundcard in any case.
The soundcard may indeed have something to do with the crackling but I doubt it's the lack of power.
I don't doubt that a tube amp would be a good match for these but I won't be going down that road in the foreseeable future.

 

[003]

Well ok... I don't mean that more voltage is "agreed to sound better with high impedance headphones", but that on paper alone it is required to drive them properly. Even if you're not an audiophile... you should know from hanging around head-fi that an amp is not to increase volume BTW, it is to increase the control of the drivers in the headphone. Think someone fresh out of driving class in high school vs. a nascar driver. By integrated amp I assume you mean a speaker amp? Generally (but not always), the headphone jack on them is crap, and is not even part of the speaker amp section, it is just a cheap and simple circuit thrown in for another feature to advertise.

If you won't be picking up any external amps, you should seriously try and get down to a meet!

 

[HFat]

Depends on the paper... on my paper, desired SPL and sensitivity matter more than impedance for voltage requirements but what do I know.

I trust my ears above the head-fi party line... not because they're better than yours (most likely they're significantly worse) but because they'll be the ones doing the listening.
I'm also suspicious of the wisdom of crowds but that's another matter entirely.

EDIT: I have a nice dedicated headphone amp. I just don't use it all the time. And yeah, integrated amps suck for driving headphones but this one can deliver enough voltage to fry most cans. And you said voltage was the issue...

 

[MaloS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFat /img/forum/go_quote.gif Depends on the paper... on my paper, desired SPL and sensitivity matter more than impedance for voltage requirements but what do I know.

There are electronic reasons, since a headphone is not a 600 ohm resistor, it is a 600 ohm reactive load (and the impedance is not even consistent across the spectrum). A good amplifier will be ignorant of those differences. A poor amplifier won't be. Higher treble and lower bass are always the areas most effected by lack of power. It is not about voltage swing only mind you, since current delivery is important also. In other words - even power delivery with total disregard to frequency. A good solid-state amplfier will do it more so than tube (M^3 or something like that, low output impedance amps).

That being said - fixing your pair is the first and foremost priority, and then see if distortion is still there after that. If it is, it is probably due to the insufficient power being provided.