Bill-P's modded Denon AH-D5000

Today I passed over the Focal Utopias to Bill-P. On the way he let me hear his modded Denon AH-D5000s. I listened to two songs at his place: Get Lucky (Random Access Memory) and Money (Pink Floyd) - had to hit the road cuz family was waiting for me in the car. From Get Lucky I got a sense that these were warm but not bassy cans. These are the first Fostex bio-cellulose driver based cans that sound relatively neutral to me, and that is a major achievement. From Money I got a sense of some of the resolution these cans can pull. It was surprisingly good.

I told Bill-P right there that while I felt the cans were warm, the tuning was definitively neutral. There was not the usual brightness that I've experienced in the past with the Fostex kilo-buck cans. As I'm writing this I'm enjoying this low-fi Youtube video:



I feel issues with brightness would immediately appear with above AV-linky if these cans had severe peaks in the treble area. None of that. Bass has plenty of impact, but it's not overbearing. It does not mask detail. The mods on these cans are masterfully done.

Doing more listening.

Just in case, here is a picture of how these cans look like:



Congratulations Bill-P! I still remember what you did with those DT770s I heard at one of the meets. That was amazing too.

Measurements:

Frequency Response



Distortion Right



Distortion Left



CSD Right



CSD Left



There seems to be some channel imbalance. But TBH it didn't bother me.

Compare to Fostex TH600:

 

Unfortunately I no longer have the TH600s. The comparo above was done using TH600 measurements done in the past.

However, pads do make a difference in many headphones, and I feel this might very well be the case with these cans.

I would contact @Bill-P to inquire about the modifications he performed on the Denons.

 

Nulls in FR that turn out as ridges in CSD = severe peakage. Basically there's a sharp nasty peak at 9kHz.

 

Could indeed be a nasty in the 9 kHz area.

 

@Bill-P, there is indeed a nasty around 9 kHz. Some of the songs above I was using did not show this problem, but some electronic (lo-fi) music does seem to have some issues with some tsss-tsss-tsss passages.

For reference, here is a lo-fi song that seems to display this issue as the song starts (errr... IMO):



I'm not using the linky above to show awesome sound (though I do like the song - cuz good ol' party days now gone). Bad, so-so, and so forth recordings sometimes can pin-point issues better for me.

For most songs, this (9 kHz stuff) does not bother me that much though. And I feel you nailed the tuning.

A song that I feel has some issues as well, but much less and is much more enjoyable with these cans to me might be this one:

 

That is a good point. I dunno about the THXes, but the pads @Bill-P has on these Denons are awesomely comfy and fit my ears well.

 

Like I said. These are the best headphones I heard using the Fostex bio-cellulose driver. Congratz!

 

I don't have them with me. It basically came down to this: There were stock DT700s in one table, and @Bill-P 's, and @Bill-P 's were awesome relative to the stock. @Bill-P may have some details on how he went about them.