Nazo
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2008
- Posts
- 190
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- 11
So I just got a pair of Sennheiser HD555s that are currently in the process of being burned in (I'm shooting for around 100 hours for the actual burn-in before using them after a lot of searching around to get an idea what suits them best and they should be ready late Thursday afternoon.) Once they are ready, I'll be doing at least a bit of basic modding.
First thing, of course, that foam "surround reflector" is going to come out. Not only are people almost unanimously (with only one exception that I saw) in favor of the sound difference, but it sounds like this is probably the chief difference between the HD555 and HD595, so that on its own is a huge "upgrade," lol. I'm a fan of more neutral and controlled but accurate and in-depth bass (as my primary headphones should sufficiently prove) so it's a given that I'd do that much based on what people were saying.
Also, eventually I will properly recable (eg drilling a hole in the other side and that sort of thing to directly connect the wire without completely unbalanced cord lengths and such,) but for now I may have to keep it simple. Most importantly, the 6.35mm connector needs to be replaced directly by a 3.5mm connector. None of my equipment (including a fairly expensive and quite decent headphone amplifier) uses 6.35mm connectors, so while in theory it's best to have that on there for professional use, for my use it's just a disadvantage and having to use a 3.5mm-to-6.35mm adapter should I ever actually need access to a 6.35mm device will be more than sufficient for my needs. Is the stock cabling proper wire so that I can just cut off the original plug and solder in a new one for now? (In particular, I mean not that painted crap where if you cut it, about the only way to resolder is to take sandpaper or something to the end and try to take some of the paint off resulting in a very brittle wire and incomplete connections...) Well, surely they wouldn't do something like that on this level, but, it would be pretty hard to uncut it once I cut it, so I'd like to ask first.
Finally, I'm not sure about the inner grill mod. It's An extremely permanent mod to do so early in the headphone's lifetime to say the least and technically reduces the strength of the headphone casing and such (though I'm not terribly concerned about that since they will be mostly used at home anyway.) In particular, I do worry about the fact that basically this would mean the loss of the grill cloth which should have no acoustical disadvantages (assuming they did it properly anyway, but it seems like decent quality grill cloth is actually quite cheap, so it's hard to imagine that they used bad material) which means dust would be able to get in. I thought about adding my own grill cloth or trying to get the original material to stay in with glue or something, but I wonder how realistic this would be with the inner grill cut out? It could be quite hard to glue it effectively without leaving big globs of glue in the cups.
I'm actually considering what another person suggested in the original mod thread as a less permanent mod suggestion. Basically it was adding a very tiny bit of damping and filling (I wonder, is polyfill better or would fiberglass be better? I have far more than enough of each for this. It seems like fiberglass would be better, but the main point of this is to reduce higher frequency reflections and as I recall it sounded like from what at least one thing I read was saying that fiberglass is particularly good with bass ranges -- with no mention of if it might be better at higher frequencies than polyfill or not) making sure of course not to put too much since this is an open cup headphone. The other part was to put a damping material on the inside casing itself to help absorb standing waves and hopefully reduce leakage or whatever. I'm not sure what I have on hand that would be decent for that, but, there's something I've been wondering about every since I first got Denon headphones and heard about the MarkL-mod (or adapted MarkL-mod for the AH-D1000/1001 series.)
A key part of that mod was to put a damping material inside the casing because the materials used had some very bad effects on the bass in particular and the chosen material originally was basically that asphalt-based material (specifically Dynamat. Though it seems MarkL uses some other material that I think might be basically vinyl in the center now.) More recently, as I began actually building a few basic (and ugly, lol) speaker enclosures, I ran across this material as a cheaper, lighter weight alternative to the asphalt-based solutions. For my needs in them (lol, mostly cheapness in particular) they were quite suitable to use in the speakers at least. But, I've been wondering every since I read that claim in the product description that it could compete directly with asphalt-based damping if this material might just be suitable to headphone mods as well? If so, wouldn't it actually be far better since it's so much thinner and even a bit lighter? I haven't been brave enough to even think of trying it in my headphones since they were bought pre-modded from Lawton Audio rather than me trying to do it myself (I had a lot of troubles trying to add the Dynamat in my old AH-D1001s with a lot of trapped air bubbles and I also ended up kind of messing up the screws and such along the way of the process, so the thought of messing with my AH-D2000s feels a bit discouraging.) I still have a full sheet of this stuff left (more than enough for two headphones even, though I still am not brave enough to mess with the D2000s since they work so well as it is already) so am thinking of using it. Anyone have any thoughts on how good using this material may or may not be in the headphones? Think it might be suitable to the HD555's particular needs?
EDIT: Well, nevermind I guess. I decided to go ahead and open them up to get a look inside and to remove the foam since I'd probably be too tired after work tomorrow to deal with it and felt pretty silly when I saw the wires. I guess there was never any need to ask since they're exposed inside there. Of course, when I properly recable I'll have to get rid of that painted crap on the inside first thing though. And of course they each managed to come loose in the process of doing everything. While I had them opened I saw also that the whole vinyl idea was out the window. I thought the idea was to cover the back side of the casing around the driver, but I see even that is actually basically open with just a filter. The vinyl would absolutely block the sound and do far more harm than good. I gave up and just went ahead and cut out the inner grill. For now I went with just trying to sort of put grill cloth on the inside of the metal grill by melting a bit of hot glue around the outer edges through the cloth. It's not perfect and I'll need to do a better job later on, but it should keep dust from collecting inside the drivers or anything like that (which was my biggest concern. I have a pretty dusty house, so if it could happen anywhere it would surely happen here.)
Anyway, I guess I answered all of my own questions, sorry. Well, I'm still curious about the effectiveness of that vinyl material for damping in a headphone, but this clearly is NOT the headphone to test that in. (If I hadn't given away my old AH-D1001s they'd probably be the ideal test, but sadly they're gone now.)
First thing, of course, that foam "surround reflector" is going to come out. Not only are people almost unanimously (with only one exception that I saw) in favor of the sound difference, but it sounds like this is probably the chief difference between the HD555 and HD595, so that on its own is a huge "upgrade," lol. I'm a fan of more neutral and controlled but accurate and in-depth bass (as my primary headphones should sufficiently prove) so it's a given that I'd do that much based on what people were saying.
Also, eventually I will properly recable (eg drilling a hole in the other side and that sort of thing to directly connect the wire without completely unbalanced cord lengths and such,) but for now I may have to keep it simple. Most importantly, the 6.35mm connector needs to be replaced directly by a 3.5mm connector. None of my equipment (including a fairly expensive and quite decent headphone amplifier) uses 6.35mm connectors, so while in theory it's best to have that on there for professional use, for my use it's just a disadvantage and having to use a 3.5mm-to-6.35mm adapter should I ever actually need access to a 6.35mm device will be more than sufficient for my needs. Is the stock cabling proper wire so that I can just cut off the original plug and solder in a new one for now? (In particular, I mean not that painted crap where if you cut it, about the only way to resolder is to take sandpaper or something to the end and try to take some of the paint off resulting in a very brittle wire and incomplete connections...) Well, surely they wouldn't do something like that on this level, but, it would be pretty hard to uncut it once I cut it, so I'd like to ask first.
Finally, I'm not sure about the inner grill mod. It's An extremely permanent mod to do so early in the headphone's lifetime to say the least and technically reduces the strength of the headphone casing and such (though I'm not terribly concerned about that since they will be mostly used at home anyway.) In particular, I do worry about the fact that basically this would mean the loss of the grill cloth which should have no acoustical disadvantages (assuming they did it properly anyway, but it seems like decent quality grill cloth is actually quite cheap, so it's hard to imagine that they used bad material) which means dust would be able to get in. I thought about adding my own grill cloth or trying to get the original material to stay in with glue or something, but I wonder how realistic this would be with the inner grill cut out? It could be quite hard to glue it effectively without leaving big globs of glue in the cups.
I'm actually considering what another person suggested in the original mod thread as a less permanent mod suggestion. Basically it was adding a very tiny bit of damping and filling (I wonder, is polyfill better or would fiberglass be better? I have far more than enough of each for this. It seems like fiberglass would be better, but the main point of this is to reduce higher frequency reflections and as I recall it sounded like from what at least one thing I read was saying that fiberglass is particularly good with bass ranges -- with no mention of if it might be better at higher frequencies than polyfill or not) making sure of course not to put too much since this is an open cup headphone. The other part was to put a damping material on the inside casing itself to help absorb standing waves and hopefully reduce leakage or whatever. I'm not sure what I have on hand that would be decent for that, but, there's something I've been wondering about every since I first got Denon headphones and heard about the MarkL-mod (or adapted MarkL-mod for the AH-D1000/1001 series.)
A key part of that mod was to put a damping material inside the casing because the materials used had some very bad effects on the bass in particular and the chosen material originally was basically that asphalt-based material (specifically Dynamat. Though it seems MarkL uses some other material that I think might be basically vinyl in the center now.) More recently, as I began actually building a few basic (and ugly, lol) speaker enclosures, I ran across this material as a cheaper, lighter weight alternative to the asphalt-based solutions. For my needs in them (lol, mostly cheapness in particular) they were quite suitable to use in the speakers at least. But, I've been wondering every since I read that claim in the product description that it could compete directly with asphalt-based damping if this material might just be suitable to headphone mods as well? If so, wouldn't it actually be far better since it's so much thinner and even a bit lighter? I haven't been brave enough to even think of trying it in my headphones since they were bought pre-modded from Lawton Audio rather than me trying to do it myself (I had a lot of troubles trying to add the Dynamat in my old AH-D1001s with a lot of trapped air bubbles and I also ended up kind of messing up the screws and such along the way of the process, so the thought of messing with my AH-D2000s feels a bit discouraging.) I still have a full sheet of this stuff left (more than enough for two headphones even, though I still am not brave enough to mess with the D2000s since they work so well as it is already) so am thinking of using it. Anyone have any thoughts on how good using this material may or may not be in the headphones? Think it might be suitable to the HD555's particular needs?
EDIT: Well, nevermind I guess. I decided to go ahead and open them up to get a look inside and to remove the foam since I'd probably be too tired after work tomorrow to deal with it and felt pretty silly when I saw the wires. I guess there was never any need to ask since they're exposed inside there. Of course, when I properly recable I'll have to get rid of that painted crap on the inside first thing though. And of course they each managed to come loose in the process of doing everything. While I had them opened I saw also that the whole vinyl idea was out the window. I thought the idea was to cover the back side of the casing around the driver, but I see even that is actually basically open with just a filter. The vinyl would absolutely block the sound and do far more harm than good. I gave up and just went ahead and cut out the inner grill. For now I went with just trying to sort of put grill cloth on the inside of the metal grill by melting a bit of hot glue around the outer edges through the cloth. It's not perfect and I'll need to do a better job later on, but it should keep dust from collecting inside the drivers or anything like that (which was my biggest concern. I have a pretty dusty house, so if it could happen anywhere it would surely happen here.)
Anyway, I guess I answered all of my own questions, sorry. Well, I'm still curious about the effectiveness of that vinyl material for damping in a headphone, but this clearly is NOT the headphone to test that in. (If I hadn't given away my old AH-D1001s they'd probably be the ideal test, but sadly they're gone now.)
