garyc
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Post by garyc on May 22, 2020 8:40:00 GMT
Does anyone have any experience with the BTR3 Bluetooth receiver/headphone amp?
I am considering getting one as an alternative to getting a pair of Bluetooth headphones (like I need another pair of headphones, right?) to go with a FiiO M6 I recently bought, plus an iPad for iPlayer/Sounds use.
I was thinking of getting some ATH M50xBTs, but they are a shade over what I would want to spend and I'm not a fan of the look or sweat inducing pads. If Beyer made BT DT770s I'd probably consider them. Then there are the Sony WH-CH700s, not too expensive but do I need another pair of so-so headphones?
However, my wife has recently taken a liking to my HD662 Evos for listening to R4 plays with her iPad and I quite like the idea of being able to take existing headphones with an input jack like these (I also have T40RPs), and BT-ify them. I could even use it as an excuse to upgrade my old Pro 80s to Pro 82s with the jack socket. Or maybe buy some DT770s and fit a jack socket to them.
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garyc
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Post by garyc on Jun 25, 2018 11:41:29 GMT
Yep that will most likely add about GBP 40.- ? (VAT + costs) Just received an email from Customs Clearance Ltd. (acting on behalf of DHL - as jello noted earlier in the thread) with a request to pay £31.33 to clear the goods (£8.50 'Customs Entry' charge and £22.83 VAT, which is 20% of $150), so not too bad - it make the total cost to be £145. HD660S retail at £430. Looking forward to receiving (and modding) the 58X soon.
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garyc
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Post by garyc on Jun 21, 2018 8:17:49 GMT
Just received an email from Massdrop that my HD58X are on the way (with a DHL link that can't find the details, ho-hum). I expect the next thing I will get is an invoice from DHL for UK import duty and VAT. :-)
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garyc
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Post by garyc on Jan 12, 2018 23:59:46 GMT
Well that’s some good news. I have ordered the 681 velours ($15 on eBay, shipped from Shenzhen) then at least they should become as comfortable as my 662evos. I think I will take the 688s to work and live with them for a while and then perform the mods. But I still somehow feel that I’ll end up with something that is only slightly different to the 662 evos at more than twice the price. A bit of a pig in a poke really. Ah well.
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Jan 12, 2018 22:14:13 GMT
superluc , I’m sympathetic to this viewpoint: I expected a lot more (no blame attaches to solderdude: I went ahead and ordered these all by myself, there was no gun to my head). But really Superlux have done nothing to the build quality, even gone backwards with no extra velour pads. Yes,I think they are overpriced by about 100%. Ok, so I am not enough of an audiophile to spot the suck-outs in mid range, but if nothing else they sounded not really much different to the 662evo but with severely attenuated low bass and uncomfortable wearing with no velour pads. I expected a lot more for double the price. Now, the upside is when comparing I have rediscovered my Takstar Pro 80s and my eye is on the Pro 82s. Will I never learn?
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Jan 9, 2018 22:21:32 GMT
Now for the weird part - i changed the pleather pads and their thin cloth with the HD662 velour pads with their 2mm foam disc and the bass/subbass has increased considerably, it's now more pronounced than on HD662 (maybe due to the foam disc?). With the pleather pads, the bass is lower than on modified HD662. Could be that i'm wrong, it was just a first impression, will check at home. Mine arrived yesterday and are as they came out of the box. I just did a comparison with my modded 662evos with their velour pads had the same impression - much reduced bass. It was immediately noticeable on the thudding first 20 seconds of Call Off Your Dogs by Lake Street Dive (streamed from Spotify) and still significant as the vocal comes in on top and the bass squirms around along with it for the next 20 seconds. I checked with some Takstar Pro80s with HM5 felt pads and the bass with those was closer to the 662s but not quite as full on. Switching back to the 688s it just sounds very lacking in bass. Despite hating the pleather pads and having to bend the head bars to buggery to get a lighter fit (the 662s are similarly adjusted so they should be similar in terms of bass impact to the light fit), I have resisted swapping the 662 pads over until some we get reference words, thoughts and measurements from Frans. Otherwise my general impression was the mid range and vocals seemed cleaner and more natural, but I was a little underwhelmed to be perfectly honest given the jump in price. Not providing velour pads was a bit cheapskate too.
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Dec 25, 2017 20:19:04 GMT
Possibly due to an excess of Christmas ‘spirit’ and in a rash moment I signed up to Massdrop and ordered a pair. I have every expectation that, being in the UK, I will be clobbered with vat and import duty.
Naysayers on Reddit are speculating that this may be part of an offload of material - I did find this not entirely credible (though I am still not entirely sure how the Massdrop business model works) and solderdude’s doubt that this is not the case is encouraging. They were also predicting a 6 month delivery wait, but we shall see. Currently I own a pair of modded HD555s and hankered after some 600s but was always put off by the jump in price, so I thought it was worth a punt on these.
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Jun 5, 2017 17:10:52 GMT
I watched it and it was very enjoyable. Howard Goodall is more of a classical music guy (remember recording a series he did on the orchestra way back when - on VHS...). He goes more into the analysis of the record from the composition point of view (counterpoint, modes - aeolian etc.), but I learnt a bit from it (I just listen, not analyse, not having had much of a musical education beyond banging a tambourine in the first year of grammar school). There is also an Annie Nightingale radio program from 1987, which might be more widely available: " Sgt. Pepper: And A Splendid Time Was Guaranteed For All
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Jun 2, 2017 8:36:50 GMT
Kris Drever - winner of the BBC Folk Awards 2017 Folk Singer of the Year
Title track of his latest album
and another from that album
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garyc
contributing
Posts: 45
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HD414
May 24, 2017 12:11:04 GMT
Post by garyc on May 24, 2017 12:11:04 GMT
Sennheiser updated the hd424 with a more plush looking pad type which was also quite average, but again, for those days of not measuring too accurately, it wasn't bad in comparison to many others at the time. The 414 was cheap and could be thrown around with no damage so they served a purpose. I went to some horribly coloured JVC headphones which had round Grado like pads with a volume control on the outside of each cup. They were on ear and very uncomfortable, so they didn't stay too long. In fact, headphones weren't taken at all seriously and the idea of a headphone amp was not generally bothered with, with the feed coming from an attenuated speaker out line. No regard for impedance either. Maybe now, people might see why the dt150 became so popular in studios. It had bass!! TBH, I can't see any reason for modern sound engineers to be using an hd414 for working with. It's totally open and as you say Frans, they are skewed in FR, but for those bad old days, there really wasn't that much choice. Comparatively it was good, but compared to modern headphones, it's nostalgia I suspect. The idea of manipulating one for monitoring in a modern studio is just a bit odd. I would have thought a modern so called, 'bassy' headphone would respond better to eq since the drivers nowadays are better and the old 414's might be a bit stiff now!! In any case, not all modern headphones are bassy, so I don't know where that came from either. Personally, I couldn't see the point really of trying to manipulate an hd414 except for curiosity. You've just reminded me of some puke green headphones I bought in the late 70s, my first ever pair which had two volume sliders on the outside of the cups, not sure they were JVC but they did come from Laskys, Oxford. I replaced them with the HD414s when I started work, then moved to the HD420s a couple of years later, much more comfortable to wear than the 414s where you could feel the drivers on your ears as the pads aged. Yes, the 1/4" headphone jack on my PW Texan amp switched the speaker output (so the speakers muted with the headphones in) with a resistive step down for the headphones. Believe it was the same (without checking the schematic) on my A&R A60, but that also had non-switched speaker terminals at the back.
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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HD414
May 23, 2017 22:13:24 GMT
Post by garyc on May 23, 2017 22:13:24 GMT
Had a look in the garage and all I could find were some mouldy HD420s, which were the replacements for the HD414s.
There are a few pairs (white/black, some with DIN speaker connectors, some with defects) for sale on eBay Germany, BINs around 80 euros and best offers. Not even with the bargiest of barge poles I fear.
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garyc
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HD414
May 23, 2017 16:59:51 GMT
Post by garyc on May 23, 2017 16:59:51 GMT
In the simulation you also have to incorporate the 2k driver. This will be a complex one but a 2k resistor will be good enough from net 1013 to ground. The inductor needs to be 9.4mH (2x 4.7mH in series) but would be better to use 10mH in reality. The question still remains how the actual FR of the HD414 is. When doing the parallel inductor simulation try to simulate this by paralleling 2 'series circuits' of a 4.7mH + 70 Ohm. That will probably give no problems when simulating. Thanks for the tips - I did actually have a 2k resistor for the driver in one iteration, but in my fiddling trying to get the sim to work about I obviously lost it somehow and didn't notice. I only found PartSim yesterday and have yet to become familiar with its foibles. Is there a (free, or cheap) Windows based simulator that you can recommend?
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garyc
contributing
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HD414
May 23, 2017 13:55:28 GMT
Post by garyc on May 23, 2017 13:55:28 GMT
This caught my interest as I used to own a pair of HD414s in 1979 (and may still do, if I can get to a box in the garage where I think they are). I was struggling to follow the words and so decided to try simulating the circuit (many years since I've done anything like that). I found PartSim online and came up with this (the plot is 20hz to 50kHz in case its not clear): Where net1013 is the junction between the first paralllel resistor/capacitor and the second resistor (R1/C1 to R2 in this). The 60 ohm is to simulate the inductor resistance. I found it impossible to simulate with 2 inductors in parallel, maybe some strange feature of the simulator, so just left it as a single lumped inductor, did the same for the 270/33 caps.: It looks to me like a 1.09dB drop at 2.5kHz. Does that look right Franz? (edit: I think there is something strange with the simulator, or the way I am using it, as even if I change the inductor to 50nH is still shows the dip at 3.9kHz) (edit2: no it's me, I have nH instead of mH!!!. I'll update the freq response in a while) (edit3: circuit now has 10mH and shows the 2.5kHz dip and slight rise from about 19kHz). Changing the values to 2.35mH with 70 resistance gives a dip at 3.9kHz of 1.07dB Making the inductor 10mH/70ohm with a 300 instead of 680 gives a 2.1db dip at 2.8kHz:
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garyc
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Post by garyc on May 22, 2017 14:10:58 GMT
Mark, do you still have a pair of the Hyperions left? I'd also take the Spinfits if you still have them.
I've got new desk neighbours all running FPGA systems with tiny, whiny fans. I need some isolation!
Cheers, Gary
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garyc
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Posts: 45
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Post by garyc on Jan 16, 2017 10:47:14 GMT
I may be in a minority but actually I find the 662EVOs very comfortable to wear (with the velour pads). Regarding the look, I really don't mind the shiny plastic as I don't spend too much time admiring myself in the mirror while wearing them ;-) The most irritating thing is the 'flying plug' arrangement which requires a socket to socket gender bender if you want to use a regular (as opposed to extension lead) 3rd party cable. I suppose I ought to get round to making up my own cable with a 3.5mm socket but have yet to find a suitable source for good (non-microphonic) cable (converting the headphone plug to a socket is too much faff).
But anyway, what first drew me to Superlux (668B, the 'wings' are as uncomfortable as hell) was the price and the reported sound quality, plus readily available velour pads. Then I discovered DIYAH through all the good comments on the 662EVO. Right now, I would be prepared to pay an intermediate price (say £100-200) for a closed model that had a better headband, socket rather than flying plug and more oval shaped pads (ala Sennheiser) as the 'massive round' style compromises the isolation, at least for my small head. Improvements to the sound (a smoother top end) would be welcome but perhaps not quite as important as making these design improvements. An open design could even start to give the HD600 and 650 a run for their money.
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