[Senes]

Hi guys

I recently had the opportunity to hear the SRS 2170 and I found it amazing (well, it was my first high end headphone so...., now I want to try high end audio technica...)
And I was wondering:
Is there huge differences between the 2170 and the 3170 (307 + 323s) ?
'cuz I think if I buy a Stax headphone I could'nt afford more than the 3170 (well, MAYBE SR 407 + 323s...)
 

I hope i'll get some great answers
 

 

[n3rdling]

They should be close to identical; I'd just get the cheaper one.

 

[Senes]

Seriously

 
Well, so I should get sr 207 if you're right

And for the amps? Because I can't find SR 207 alone (only with SRM 252s) on amazon.jap, so is there a huge difference between 252S, 323S and 006ts?
(And well, I believe you for the headphones, but I would be a lot surprised if it's the same case with 252S vs 323S)

 

[yawg]

  - Headband vibration is difficult to believe but I guess we can hear very very tiny colorations.
- Sennheiser actually claimed the visco-elastic treatment on the HD800 was especially aimed toward attenuating those resonances in the headband
- On a mechanical standpoint, it is correct that any sound in the earcup / vibration of the earcup will somewhat transmit to the gimbal and other mechanical parts and they will vibrate in turn especially at  specific frequencies we refer to as modes.
- Now this vibration might feedback to the earcup and radiate back into the earcup cavity (structure borne path)
- One could also imagine a thin metal headband to actually radiating sound as it vibrates, this sound then propagating back to the ear (airborne path)
- Yes another "flanking" path would be structure borne transmission to the skull
- I have always assumed that any of these secondary radiation paths in a headphone are negligible since they're orders of magnitude lower than the direct field from the driver itself
- But then again, people claim different earcup materials sound differently despite having absolutely negligible difference in sound reflection / absorption properties
- So I guess, however tiny these forms of distortion are, they're nevertheless noticeable?
- To conclude: yes, applying vibration absorber will effectively drop contributions from headband by anywhere between 3dB and 20dB depending on the engineering behind
- As for the measurable aspect, I bet it would be challenging. It would be invisible in a frequency response function, possibly visible in a THD plot I guess...

   
Your discussion of paths, , makes me wonder how the distortion which appears to be damped by sorbothane  is getting back to the ear. Is it because the earcups are vibrating and thus stimulating the eardrum or is it getting back to the drivers and interfering with their operation, or if I follow your argument even based on bone conduction.
 
I fully understand that persons who haven't heard the phonomenon in person  can't imagine it being especially significant.

Interesting discussion but it's getting way too esoteric IMO. Everytime I listen to my LNS (upgraded with the 507 leather pads) I'm amazed how they "disappear" as transducers. I feel I'm right there. Although their bass response is quite lean compared to my custom 3.6 Maggies.
 
You guys are on an eternal search for the perfect thing. No such thing exists in the dialectics of solid matter. I have made my peace with that fact.
 
Good luck!

 

[arnaud]

Don't drag me in, I'm not the sorbothane man!

 

[wink]

He's the Stax and sushi man - Electrostatic fish fillets.   

 

[edstrelow]

 
Interesting discussion but it's getting way too esoteric IMO. Everytime I listen to my LNS (upgraded with the 507 leather pads) I'm amazed how they "disappear" as transducers. I feel I'm right there. Although their bass response is quite lean compared to my custom 3.6 Maggies.
 
You guys are on an eternal search for the perfect thing. No such thing exists in the dialectics of solid matter. I have made my peace with that fact.
 
Good luck!

I showed  sorbed phones for 2 days at the recent Canjam in SoCal to 50-70 persons (I didn't count but I was so occupied that I didn' get to see much of the rest of the program.) Very few people said they couldn't hear the difference, most commented on the improvements, some were amazed and a few said I had the best sound in the place.  It's not a trivial effect, more to the point it shows that headphone designers, with the possible exception of Sennheiser, have missed a major design problem, the dissipation of energy in the earcups. 
 
I don't know how much you paid for upgraded earpads for the LNS but I I use about 50 cents worth of sorbothane in my LNS  and the sound change is a revealation. Actually, I think part of the reason some pads help sound is the same reason as why sorb works. It acts to dissipate energy by converting it to heat, in accordance with Newtonian principles.

 

[yawg]

Got my leather pads from AudioCubes Japan. Imports from Japan are a bitch in the Netherlands. I had to pay 132 € for them plus the Dutch customs let me wait more than two weeks. When I buy from private I have them declare a lower value, up to 55 US$ are import tax free plus I get the stuff in less than a week. The original pleather pads were worn out anyway.
 
I'd love to see some detailed photos of your mod. Thanks.

 

[edstrelow]

  Got my leather pads from AudioCubes Japan. Imports from Japan are a bitch in the Netherlands. I had to pay 132 € for them plus the Dutch customs let me wait more than two weeks. When I buy from private I have them declare a lower value, up to 55 US$ are import tax free plus I get the stuff in less than a week. The original pleather pads were worn out anyway.
 
I'd love to see some detailed photos of your mod. Thanks.

This is a picture of what I did with the LNS and 404 Lambdas.  soren_brix has also tried putting sorbothane along the edegs of the drivers. Feel free to experiment.  This has been a trial and error activity.
 

 
Here is the thread in which I discuss these mods in greater detail.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/744839/cleaning-up-the-sound-of-stax-phones-with-sorbothane-lambdas-srxiii-pro-sr003-sr007-and-finally-the-sigma

 

[n3rdling]

It should be noted that the test Ed setup at CanJam wasn't very scientific at all, so "hearing the difference" I think is still under question.  Unless I missed something, no two headphones were the same model, so testing the effects of sorbothane damping (with vs without) wasn't really possible.  I could see it making a difference, but I'd probably do the mounting a little differently.  I'm actually pretty stupid because I had a LNS in a box at the meet the whole time and didn't think to leave it at Ed's table so people could at least compare a LNS with sorbothane damping vs stock.  Next time.
 
I did get a chance to bring my O2mk1 over and compare it to the O2mk2 with sorb, and preferred the O2mk1 FWIW.  The bass was more linear and the mids weren't so upfront.  Both excellent headphones though.

 

[edstrelow]

  It should be noted that the test Ed setup at CanJam wasn't very scientific at all, so "hearing the difference" I think is still under question.  Unless I missed something, no two headphones were the same model, so testing the effects of sorbothane damping (with vs without) wasn't really possible.  I could see it making a difference, but I'd probably do the mounting a little differently.  I'm actually pretty stupid because I had a LNS in a box at the meet the whole time and didn't think to leave it at Ed's table so people could at least compare a LNS with sorbothane damping vs stock.  Next time.
 
I did get a chance to bring my O2mk1 over and compare it to the O2mk2 with sorb, and preferred the O2mk1 FWIW.  The bass was more linear and the mids weren't so upfront.  Both excellent headphones though.

I  didn't see any scientific experiments on display at Canjam.  In other equipment displays,  you were only given the chance to listen to what was set up or in some situations possibly plug your own phones into someone else's system.
 
In fact  I set up a direct comparison of similar damped and undamped phones to allow people to make their own comparisons.  I did not have 2 identical phones  to compare but I did put the 2 most similar, a Sigma pro and a Sigma 404. running off the separate SRM1 Mk2 amps but running running off the same cd system so you could her the same music on the different damped and undamped phones just by taking them off and on your head.
 
I recall that n3rdling came over for about 10 minutes,  brought over his 007 mk1  and commented about the different frequency responses of the two 007 phones.  I didn't listen to his phones.  His opinion is a fair comment and I do not argue with people about what they hear and/or prefer.
 
This is a cheap tweak, easily reversible and I suggest anyone with an interest  in improving the sound of their current equipment give it a shot.  I stand by the mods I have reported in my other thread. Sorbothane may not be the ultimate solution to headphone ills, there may be better products out there or better cup design may be able to eliminate the resonance issues  but I maintain this issues have not been properly dealt with by virtually any company so far, other than Sennheiser whose description of the HD800 discusses what look like the same issues.  They even talk about damping the  HD800 metal headband, which was the problem I noted with the 007A which got me started on this issue. 

 

[n3rdling]

Right, I'm just saying that in order to have a good idea about what a mod does you should try to eliminate as many other factors as possible.  Ideally one would be able to test the exact same headphone unit with and without mods, as you did in your initial experiments, but that's obviously not the easiest thing to do at a meet and also introduces auditory memory factors.  The next best thing would be to have the same model of headphone with and without mods side by side, but that introduces unit variability problems.  Stax probably has close to the best unit to unit variability marks in the industry though, which is why I wish I left my LNS at your table.  I think once you start using different models for the tests, things fall apart quickly though.  The Sigma Pro and Sigma 404 should be similar, but I don't think I've ever heard an owner, including yourself, say they sound the same.  With the upstream chain remaining the same and the phones being similar, I think you did the best you could, but it still wasn't a valid test to me.

 

[Earspeakers]

I'm having something happen with my pair of 307's - haven't verified or tested it with any other pair. 
 
I'll be listening to some vocal piece, recordings of the Bach Cantatas for example. Rarely a strong soloist will reach the peak of their line, and one or both of my drivers will fall apart. It turns into a buzzing, mostly in the left, but sometimes is in the right a little bit too. But usually ends in the left earpiece sounding like it's over driven and can't go any further. 
 
I'm not which is causing it. This is with a KGST, either the amp can't handle the signal, or the 307 can't handle it. Thoughts?

 

[dripf]

  I'm having something happen with my pair of 307's - haven't verified or tested it with any other pair. 
 
I'll be listening to some vocal piece, recordings of the Bach Cantatas for example. Rarely a strong soloist will reach the peak of their line, and one or both of my drivers will fall apart. It turns into a buzzing, mostly in the left, but sometimes is in the right a little bit too. But usually ends in the left earpiece sounding like it's over driven and can't go any further. 
 
I'm not which is causing it. This is with a KGST, either the amp can't handle the signal, or the 307 can't handle it. Thoughts?

 
I had a buzzy distortion when listening to the 307 at high loudness. I swapped the headphones back to front and it remained on the left side only. It's actually my left ear's acoustic reflex causing it to what I can tell.

 

[Keithpgdrb]

  I  didn't see any scientific experiments on display at Canjam.  In other equipment displays,  you were only given the chance to listen to what was set up or in some situations possibly plug your own phones into someone else's system.
 
In fact  I set up a direct comparison of similar damped and undamped phones to allow people to make their own comparisons.  I did not have 2 identical phones  to compare but I did put the 2 most similar, a Sigma pro and a Sigma 404. running off the separate SRM1 Mk2 amps but running running off the same cd system so you could her the same music on the different damped and undamped phones just by taking them off and on your head.
 
I recall that n3rdling came over for about 10 minutes,  brought over his 007 mk1  and commented about the different frequency responses of the two 007 phones.  I didn't listen to his phones.  His opinion is a fair comment and I do not argue with people about what they hear and/or prefer.
 
This is a cheap tweak, easily reversible and I suggest anyone with an interest  in improving the sound of their current equipment give it a shot.  I stand by the mods I have reported in my other thread. Sorbothane may not be the ultimate solution to headphone ills, there may be better products out there or better cup design may be able to eliminate the resonance issues  but I maintain this issues have not been properly dealt with by virtually any company so far, other than Sennheiser whose description of the HD800 discusses what look like the same issues.  They even talk about damping the  HD800 metal headband, which was the problem I noted with the 007A which got me started on this issue. 

have you tried this with the original sr-lambda?  I was considering it.  where did you get the sorbothane you've been using?  and what thickness?