CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS

Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: stratocaster on May 13, 2015, 05:35:10 PM

Title: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: stratocaster on May 13, 2015, 05:35:10 PM

Got to experiment on some Mi Headphones by Xiaomi. Build quality is great for the price, sound quality though ... They make excellent donor phones, featuring a nice headband as well as a folding and very nice pad mounting mechanism. They come with (p)leather on-ear and over-ear pads, plus some Grado L-cush-type foam pads, which I turned into GradoBeyer pads, using Beyer DT250 pads on top. As some of you might have noticed, ljokerl reviewed these headphones on HF.
So, pictures and measurements ...

Title: Re: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: stratocaster on May 13, 2015, 05:41:24 PM

Measurements: PIC1 - on-ear pad, PIC2: over-ear pad, PIC3: Grado-type foam pad

Title: Re: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: stratocaster on May 13, 2015, 05:45:57 PM

Now, the mod. Built in some Magnum drivers I had lying around and used the GradoBeyer pads on it. Tried something different this time with the damping, giving these a kind of Sennheiser HD800 frequency response...

Title: Re: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: MuZo2 on May 13, 2015, 05:54:26 PM

Nice.
Can you post just FR with 0-50 scale.

Title: Re: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: Sforza on May 15, 2015, 03:34:29 PM

The stock measurements with the foam pads actually look quite promising. The only problem seems to be that spike at 2khz. I'd probably buy these if ever they're available locally and play with foam placement to lessen it. The THD measurements look good as well.

Do they sound as good as they measure though?

Title: Re: Mi Headphones - measurements and mod
Post by: stratocaster on May 15, 2015, 04:32:52 PM

The 2kHz peak is definitely a result of the (Grado-like) foam pads. You won't be able to eliminate it unless you work on/replace the pads. The measurements clearly show the dramatic effect pads have on a headphone.
Soundwise, the stock headphone, regardless of the 3 pads, did not do much for me. Way too much bass and lack of sparkle/air with the (p)leather pads, too Grado-like with the foam pads. I did not try to mod the stock drivers, though, since one of the drivers had an issue in the upper-mids region. So I decided to replace them with Magnum drivers.
The cups are really shallow, so there is not much room for replacement drivers and damping. I even had to "decapitate" my Magnum drivers to fit them in. But otherwise these are really pretty "Grados", even fashionable looking   ;D