CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: Bill-p on March 30, 2015, 06:12:42 AM
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Measurements took with bad coupler and very... barbaric methods in a not-so-quiet place... and with the coupler being bumped constantly, so please take all this with a grain of healthy salt.
Anyway, attached FR measurement differences of the 3 different kinds of open-cell foams that Nerdling did. I think it went like:
1st try: yellow
2nd try: blue?
3rd try: green?
CSDs also attached, but not sure how much noise around affected those. Look clean to me, tho.
Note: FR has no smoothing. Attached zoomed in and full scale for reference. I tried to keep CSD floor to -35dB from peak.
Note 2: I don't care about this measurement. My subjective impression says this is the best headphone in existence. And the 3rd foam mod that Nerdling did essentially "perfected" it, I think. Nothing should be changed from this point on.
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Yep, you have the order right.
1st try was a sponge from Home Depot I bought last night and cut up to try today.
2nd try was the closed cell foam that was in there all day Saturday.
3rd try was the open cell foam I already had and liked much more than the closed cell foam, specifically because of how much bigger the soundstage gets.
What's nice about the R10 is that the mids seem to shine through regardless for the most part. Such an involving headphone, you don't worry about anything but the music, as overused and Merceresque as that sounds. I don't know if you know Craig from Kuboten, but he's a proxy some of us use for nice stuff from Japan. He's heard all the best stuff. I remember him telling me the only two headphones that have made his hair stand on end are the R10 and SR-Omega, and that makes sense.
Anyways, my outer ring is deteriorated and I haven't restored it yet but that's next on the list. Once I do that I'm fairly certain the bass roll off won't be so severe.
Even though I don't listen to it a ton (I rotate headphones), it's a headphone I don't think I'll sell for a while. There's something about how involving that headphone is...I know if I ever sell it I'll regret it for a long time. It'll haunt me. blubliss came by my table and was telling me how he sold his R10 because he likes the SR-009 much more...he came back for a 2nd listen and said something like "I need to stop listening to these or I'm gonna regret selling mine." :p
Thanks a bunch for measuring these for me. :)
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No prob. :)
If you want my honest thought, man, I think... that R10 you have there sounds... absolutely phenomenon. If you ever want to sell it, please hit me up first. I've measured it, and I kept saying it measured like **** until I realized the scale was off. At proper scale and all, it's actually a flat line with mid emphasis, which... I think is actually what it really is.
Very very very crazy good there, I think. Out of a phone and my TTVJ portable tube hybrid, it sounded like the best thing since sliced bread. Literally. I was faked out on so many occasions. It just sounded... right. And I think now that the FR scale is right, it does sound... right. I've attached the 3rd FR measurement to show you what I mean.
You know I have a Z7 and LCD-2 as reference... but still... I wouldn't worry about that bass roll-off. It's probably that way because the driver isn't capable of reproducing low frequencies reliably. In exchange, whatever it can reproduce is very fast, very articulate. The evidence for its hyper speed is actually in CSD from 400-1KHz. Instead of continuing to decay to some unknown point, the R10 simply... stops. That's what I heard, I think. Very fast, and the hyper speed it had caused things to get in extreme focus and appear life-like. With its slight midrange tilt, it may sound very midrange-centric, but I think not unlike the SR-009 in a lot of ways. If there is anything any other headphone has over this one, it's probably just bass for a more "tangible" sound, but physicality and presence-wise, I think the R10 will forever be my reference from this point on.
Thanks for bringing it, man! This one really opened my eyes! It makes me want to sell all of my headphones, and focus on saving up for when one goes up for sale. I don't think I'd purchase anything else in between! So... that's already a fair warning for ya. Hahaha!
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Even though I don't listen to it a ton (I rotate headphones), it's a headphone I don't think I'll sell for a while. There's something about how involving that headphone is...I know if I ever sell it I'll regret it for a long time. It'll haunt me. blubliss came by my table and was telling me how he sold his R10 because he likes the SR-009 much more...he came back for a 2nd listen and said something like "I need to stop listening to these or I'm gonna regret selling mine." :p
Thanks a bunch for measuring these for me. :)
It was actually the HD800 I liked more overall. I am pretty sure I sold you this pair of R10s too, right? I am glad I sold them because the drivers are slowly going bad in many pairs I've heard about. I bought one pair and a driver went bad very quickly. Overall, I think I owned about 4 pairs (not all at once).
The last guy I sold an R10 to found someone to repair drivers, but I never heard them afterward. I actually took two pairs of R10s with one bad driver and made them into one good pair for the same guy. Taking out the drivers was incredibly stressful, it's very easy to rip the voice coil.
The R10 is a special phone, has some magic qualities, but it has several weaknesses which annoyed me in the long run.
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wish it was easier to get ahold of... I'm not about to drop $8k on something that I might not even like which also happens to have a history of dying without warning...
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Why not try making a closed HD800 first?
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The R10s would be the best donor cans evar. R10 + HD800 drivers.
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The R10s would be the best donor cans evar.
highly unlikely, the earcups are tuned specifically to the acoustics and resonance behaviour of the stock driver, the entire purpose of the cups becomes defeated once you change the driver and it'll probably sound like complete shit
that being said nothing is going to stop me from trying if I ever get an R10 chassis
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Some guy on HF made a closed HD800. He's still working on the tuning though. He actually started out with a shell very similar to the R10 but couldn't get it to sound right.
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It was actually the HD800 I liked more overall. I am pretty sure I sold you this pair of R10s too, right? I am glad I sold them because the drivers are slowly going bad in many pairs I've heard about. I bought one pair and a driver went bad very quickly. Overall, I think I owned about 4 pairs (not all at once).
The last guy I sold an R10 to found someone to repair drivers, but I never heard them afterward. I actually took two pairs of R10s with one bad driver and made them into one good pair for the same guy. Taking out the drivers was incredibly stressful, it's very easy to rip the voice coil.
The R10 is a special phone, has some magic qualities, but it has several weaknesses which annoyed me in the long run.
They were repaired by a guy here in China. I posted about him awhile back on Chang, along with info about the R10s.
The drivers were repaired perfectly =P
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Some guy on HF made a closed HD800. He's still working on the tuning though. He actually started out with a shell very similar to the R10 but couldn't get it to sound right.
Similar, yes, but the asymmetrical shape of the Sony R10 cups, as well as the contouring and texture and patterns on the inside of the cups, as well as the type of wood used and how it was dried and treated and all that was very strategically and purposely chosen by Sony engineers/designers. I think only with 3D printing we can achieve similar forms, but not similar resonance or sound.
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Similar, yes, but the asymmetrical shape of the Sony R10 cups, as well as the contouring and texture and patterns on the inside of the cups, as well as the type of wood used and how it was dried and treated and all that was very strategically and purposely chosen by Sony engineers/designers. I think only with 3D printing we can achieve similar forms, but not similar resonance or sound.
Well if you are able to locate a 100-year old Zelkova tree and mimic the outer & inner shape of both earcups then we might be set.
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Yep, you have the order right.
1st try was a sponge from Home Depot I bought last night and cut up to try today.
2nd try was the closed cell foam that was in there all day Saturday.
3rd try was the open cell foam I already had and liked much more than the closed cell foam, specifically because of how much bigger the soundstage gets.
What's nice about the R10 is that the mids seem to shine through regardless for the most part. Such an involving headphone, you don't worry about anything but the music, as overused and Merceresque as that sounds. I don't know if you know Craig from Kuboten, but he's a proxy some of us use for nice stuff from Japan. He's heard all the best stuff. I remember him telling me the only two headphones that have made his hair stand on end are the R10 and SR-Omega, and that makes sense.
Anyways, my outer ring is deteriorated and I haven't restored it yet but that's next on the list. Once I do that I'm fairly certain the bass roll off won't be so severe.
Even though I don't listen to it a ton (I rotate headphones), it's a headphone I don't think I'll sell for a while. There's something about how involving that headphone is...I know if I ever sell it I'll regret it for a long time. It'll haunt me. blubliss came by my table and was telling me how he sold his R10 because he likes the SR-009 much more...he came back for a 2nd listen and said something like "I need to stop listening to these or I'm gonna regret selling mine." :p
Thanks a bunch for measuring these for me. :)
Is that the foam that I made for you several years back Milos?
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What happened with the dudes who designed/engineered the R10?
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I heard they retired a while back. One guy on HF had an absolute mint R10 that he got as a wedding gift. The bride's dad was one of the head engineers at Sony during that time. The guy didn't even know what he had until he googled it and joined HF.
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I heard they retired a while back. One guy on HF had an absolute mint R10 that he got as a wedding gift. The bride's dad was one of the head engineers at Sony during that time. The guy didn't even know what he had until he googled it and joined HF.
Was ebay'd for 7 or 8k
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What happened with the dudes who designed/engineered the R10?
He is still alive and well I believe. Nageno Koji, current Chief Sound Engineer of Sony, signed & inspected all Sony MDR-R10 way back in the day. However, I'm not sure what was his title back when Sony was making R10.