Thinking about building wooden enclosures for my Yamaha HP-1 and HP-3. Any experience with something like that already, RD?

Thanks Luis. 

It is great to see plots for these finally.  I've never used any FR sweeps or tone generators to tune these- just music- so it's great to confirm my suspicions that the treble rolls off (hard to tell between rough treble and roll off using just music).  You can get a bit more extension out of the driver, but you have to create peaks in the upper mids and/or treble to do so.  In the end this is a great example of the damping and tuning process with orthos.  You can only push a driver so far with damping, you can tune them to make drastic changes in their response, but you can't create something that's not there.  These drivers are outstanding in every way except treble extension.  So after endless trial and error and fixing all the other problems they have in the stock enclosure (getting flat clean upper mids is quite a battle in and of itself and took a lot of work...), I let them roll off and opted for as flat a response as possible, as that's just what sounded best to me. 

What did you change to get the peak to turn into that large roll-off in the treble?

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/YamahaYH3DIYModifiedrhythmdevils.pdf

First, it's important to note that there is a peak there, but it's much much smaller than his graph would suggest.  Every headphone has a peak there on his rig LFF's Paradox does too, in the exact same spot while measuring relatively flat on Purrin's rig, it's part of the "ideal curve" and part of my frustration with his FR graphs.  Hard to tell what is his graph and what is my headphone.  But I would guess that the part that reflects my YH3's response is that part of the peak that goes above the level of the flat midrange to bass line.  The slope down in the upper mids and the rise at 9k back up to the level of the mid-bass line is his ideal curve.  But you can see how after this mild peak at 9k, the response still plumets in the exact same way as on Purrin's graph.  Bonus with this scheme is you get more upper treble.  So with this scheme I was compensating for this roll-off by boosting 9/10k a bit.  But it still sounds a bit rough and grainy because of the valley so in the end, as I've said, I opted for finding the best response for this driver.  Which for me, is flat and rolling off where the driver rolls off rather than creating uneven response.  Some people may rather have a peak to compensate.  I think this is what most people wind up doing when tuning these. 

I gave the HP50 a bit of a treble peak, so we'll see what it looks like. It's also got an experimental scheme that I hope will change the way we think about damping. 

It's too bad, as it's the only thing holding them back, but it's still not that bad, cymbals on these sound like the LCD-2. 

Thinking about building wooden enclosures for my Yamaha HP-1 and HP-3. Any experience with something like that already, RD?

I have thought about it myself, and have some ideas.  I would do it differently than the ones Smeggy made even though they are beautiful.  I think you would be better off mimicking what I did with my YH1, where it is closed directly behind the driver, and open all around the sides.  I can't be sure, but I think it helps these drivers operate ideally to have that enclosed space behind them for damping so they're not just pushing against open air.  I'm going to post all my damping schemes in the not too distant future, and will be happy to help you implement them in a wooden enclosure.  It has the potential to help with SQ.  Though I've already gotten the response to where I think the driver is the limiting factor, so I'm not sure how much benefit you would really see.  Definitely some though. 

Wow, well done! The rolloff's high enough to where I wouldn't think it makes itself apparent.

Quote from: hans030390 on July 05, 2012, 07:17:40 PM

Anyway, awesome job with the orthos, RD!

I was thinking it would be funny if I actually didn't measure the headphones but rather listened to them and drew a graph in photoshop instead.

So that's your secret! 

Thanks Luis. 

It is great to see plots for these finally.  I've never used any FR sweeps or tone generators to tune these- just music- so it's great to confirm my suspicions that the treble rolls off (hard to tell between rough treble and roll off using just music).  You can get a bit more extension out of the driver, but you have to create peaks in the upper mids and/or treble to do so.  In the end this is a great example of the damping and tuning process with orthos.  You can only push a driver so far with damping, you can tune them to make drastic changes in their response, but you can't create something that's not there.  These drivers are outstanding in every way except treble extension.  So after endless trial and error and fixing all the other problems they have in the stock enclosure (getting flat clean upper mids is quite a battle in and of itself and took a lot of work...), I let them roll off and opted for as flat a response as possible, as that's just what sounded best to me. 

Quote from: Anathallo on July 05, 2012, 12:11:09 PM

What did you change to get the peak to turn into that large roll-off in the treble?

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/YamahaYH3DIYModifiedrhythmdevils.pdf

First, it's important to note that there is a peak there, but it's much much smaller than his graph would suggest.  Every headphone has a peak there on his rig LFF's Paradox does too, in the exact same spot while measuring relatively flat on Purrin's rig, it's part of the "ideal curve" and part of my frustration with his FR graphs.  Hard to tell what is his graph and what is my headphone.  But I would guess that the part that reflects my YH3's response is that part of the peak that goes above the level of the flat midrange to bass line.  The slope down in the upper mids and the rise at 9k back up to the level of the mid-bass line is his ideal curve.  But you can see how after this mild peak at 9k, the response still plumets in the exact same way as on Purrin's graph.  Bonus with this scheme is you get more upper treble.  So with this scheme I was compensating for this roll-off by boosting 9/10k a bit.  But it still sounds a bit rough and grainy because of the valley so in the end, as I've said, I opted for finding the best response for this driver.  Which for me, is flat and rolling off where the driver rolls off rather than creating uneven response.  Some people may rather have a peak to compensate.  I think this is what most people wind up doing when tuning these. 

I gave the HP50 a bit of a treble peak, so we'll see what it looks like. It's also got an experimental scheme that I hope will change the way we think about damping. 

It's too bad, as it's the only thing holding them back, but it's still not that bad, cymbals on these sound like the LCD-2. 

Quote from: stratocaster on July 05, 2012, 06:58:39 AM

Thinking about building wooden enclosures for my Yamaha HP-1 and HP-3. Any experience with something like that already, RD?

I have thought about it myself, and have some ideas.  I would do it differently than the ones Smeggy made even though they are beautiful.  I think you would be better off mimicking what I did with my YH1, where it is closed directly behind the driver, and open all around the sides.  I can't be sure, but I think it helps these drivers operate ideally to have that enclosed space behind them for damping so they're not just pushing against open air.  I'm going to post all my damping schemes in the not too distant future, and will be happy to help you implement them in a wooden enclosure.  It has the potential to help with SQ.  Though I've already gotten the response to where I think the driver is the limiting factor, so I'm not sure how much benefit you would really see.  Definitely some though.

That's awesome that you're giving this information out to the ortho/modding community, two thumbs up. If only I could tolerate supra-aural