Pharmaboy
Headphoneus Supremus
An interesting pad-rolling anecdote w/my Caldera. Recently, for reasons I can barely explain, I got interested in a pair of Dekoni suedes designed for LCD-2/3/4 headphones. Someone on another board praised their sound with the Caldera. They weren't super expensive, though not cheap ($59), so I said WTH and bought them.
So I put on the Caldera w/these pads, which feel great against the skin--but they're really tall, at least 1/2" taller on the angled side than the lambskin thicks. The entire fit of the headphone was seriously off as a result: more clamping pressure than I'm used to, plus I needed to drop the earcup sliders to avoid having the pads sit too high.
I won't describe the sound in detail. Suffice to say it was nowhere near as destructive to the baseline sound of the Caldera as I half expected, and thus qualified as a pleasant surprise. It really was OK. But I didn't like the sound enough to keep the pads on.
Here's the point of all this: yesterday I swapped the pads back to lambskin thicks and did some listening on the V281 (which is a killer SS amp for the Caldera). I can't describe how relieved I felt hearing that familiar, wonderful thick pads + Caldera sound. It sounded unbelievably good (as always); it felt like coming home. The Caldera is such a great headphone.
- The part I can barely explain is why I would bother doing this w/my Caldera when I'm so happy with the sound from the ZMF lambskin thick pads...
- I've had plenty of truly awful results w/pad rolling (mostly in my first couple years in the hobby, before I knew better)
- Apparently I still don't know better. Chalk it up to a moment of audio delirium
So I put on the Caldera w/these pads, which feel great against the skin--but they're really tall, at least 1/2" taller on the angled side than the lambskin thicks. The entire fit of the headphone was seriously off as a result: more clamping pressure than I'm used to, plus I needed to drop the earcup sliders to avoid having the pads sit too high.
I won't describe the sound in detail. Suffice to say it was nowhere near as destructive to the baseline sound of the Caldera as I half expected, and thus qualified as a pleasant surprise. It really was OK. But I didn't like the sound enough to keep the pads on.
Here's the point of all this: yesterday I swapped the pads back to lambskin thicks and did some listening on the V281 (which is a killer SS amp for the Caldera). I can't describe how relieved I felt hearing that familiar, wonderful thick pads + Caldera sound. It sounded unbelievably good (as always); it felt like coming home. The Caldera is such a great headphone.
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