I've seen brief info on Jerg's Hifiman earpad and grill mods, and Anax's HD800 mods, and the bill-p he-560 mod (don't know what the actual mod is though).  I have some questions for clarification, if anyone could answer I would appreciate.

1)  Are both the LFF Paradox/Enigma/Slant and the Mr Speakers just commercialized mods of the fostex driver?  Are there any other mods that people sell?

What I've seen is that people are starting to mod a lot now, but I see the Jerg and Anax mods somewhat limited to materials that are available.  Either through hifiman pads or craft materials like the Creatology foam.

2)  Would there be interest in the DIY community if there was more access to a much wider and cheaper array of industrial materials?

I ask this because I've come across a lot of materials in my work - the velour, the foam, to a lesser extent the grids (i've seen metal meshes, but haven't explored it that much).  I do a good amount of sourcing in China, and for example I just bought the HE-560 and HE-6, hifiman uses basic packaging materials and some of the stuff he uses in his pads as well.  That grey foam rings in his HE-6 pleather pads is basic EVA foam used for packaging, it has the EVA smell, it's used in tons of Chinese packaging where a shape is cut out to put the product in, just look at the grey foam in his HE-6 and HE-560 boxes and you know what i mean.  His pleather and velour is nothing special either, it's just commonly available material.

I bring this up because I suspect headphone manufacturers concentrate on the driver mostly, I watched that 2012 vid with Marv and the Audeze CEO and to me it looked like he didnt' find Marv's waterfalls impressive (my read on it, I could be wrong so don't tear me a new one if that's not the case) and he even said he does a standard measurement of just the driver (no enclosure, no pads, no cup), "the proper way".  After reading about the CSD's, it's seems that the ringing is not a driver issue necessarily but is a physical acoustic one, similar to not treating a room for speakers where you get resonances at certain frequencies due to geometry ALONE.  Given that this is the case, it seems the most obvious solution (and maybe only solution) to flatten an FR or improve the sound of a headphone is almost always going to be physical mods to the geometry.

This is not new to you guys, it's new to me.  But I see you guys modding with whatever you could find, or not even looking too far and just using the materials provided by the original manufacturer. 

What if you could find you cheap materials, like foams, and fabrics, and cloths, of varying materials, with varying properties (thicknesses, densities, geomtries (metal grills with varying spacing, various metals), etc).  I think it would be very difficult to try and predict the acoustic properties of this stuff, it seems like you would just need a library of materials to just play with by trial and error.

Or for example look at the DIY geometries - Jerg's mod is cutting holes by hand.  How available are laser cutters here in the US?  In China where I am they are all 3rd party services that are super cheap, you bring almost any material to them, give them a design or just describe it to them, and they just put the shit on a laser cutting machines, run the machines and then and give it to you.  You can laser cut super thin scarve material, metal, almost anything.  $10 labor and you could have 100 pc of Jerg modded earpad pleathor flats.  Or use another material, doesn't matter.

I don't really have in interest in this sort of thing, but I see the materials HIfiman is using and I read a lot about people being confined to focus A pads or production pads and velour pads and vegan pads from other brands an d THAT'S IT!  People are limited to the reflective ability of Hifiman pleather or velour, two choices!!!!  That's very limiting!  And I now there is a HUGE variety of materials out there.  In my work I see all sorts of cotton and polyester batting and filling of different densities, foams of all sorts of densities, tons of synthetic cloths, fibers, vinyl, leather, pleather, velour, etc.  They use this stuff to make handbags, stuffed toys, clothing, scarves, etc.  None of it is high-tech acoustic material.  And at these markets in China they are sold wholesale, but if there is stock you can buy 1 yard of it.  $5.00, done.  $50.00, you've got a ton of materials to play with.  They don't have any sort of comparable market anywhere else in the world due to the current state of manufacturing and the very outsourced model that the Chinese economy runs on (most factories are NOT huge vertically integrated enterprises, many factories consist of a room with one machine where they do ONE thing, like laser cut, or die stamp designs, all contract work).  It's perfect for experimenting with no investment of capital.

I also suspect that most audio manufacturers DON'T put a ton of research into those pad and cup materials of headphones, they want something that is comfortable and doesn't look like shit.

So let me know if there is any interest in exploring new materials.  Maybe Anux and Jerg already completely exhausted this area, but if not, there may be interest.  I have no interest in DIY, I have no interest in profiting, and honestly I have no interest in even doing this as I'm busy and lazy, but it would be cool to see some sort of open source DIY library of materials to "acoustically treat" your favorite headphones.  If you want to commercialize it that's something else, but I think there's a serious lack of resources even just for DIY'ers, they have to go to Michael's and Amazon and just buy whatever is commercially available.  I won't even go back to China for a few months, but when I do I could grab this stuff if there's interest, and send it to the hardcore DIY'ers like Anux and Jerg.  Or any other poster here who already is in China could do the same. 

Or other people could chime in with suggestions, for example the grills - people are using wastepaper baskets and cutting out sections.  I don't have strong sources for this sort of material, but I've seen posts by members here who have 3-d printers, CNC resources, etc, who could custom make grills, wouldn't it be cool if there was a more community effort and those who could easily access those resources offered them up?  Just an idea.