PIONEER Headphone Development- Your input welcome

Dual concentric driver?

 

Its a contender....

 

You are really really WARM

 

I think for a fun quirky mid range phone, you could look into the design of the vintage pioneer se-l40. I personally find them to be gorgeous, especially polished with a leather headband.

Didn't like the sound though, too bass light. Also a little too small. And perhaps not portable. But damn if there was a modern version of it with removable cables and a nice airy u shape sound I'd be into it.

 

From a design perspective there's tons of great suggestions (love Japanese artistic sensibilities)

From a sound perspective, I think most folks here will enjoy obviously a more neutral signature, but, despite what tuning you go with, I think it's really important to make sure it's' very intentional and not the result of uncontrolled acoustic resonance/distortion.

To this end, making sure the housing, driver frame/basket/spider are well-braced and damped and that the the resonance points of the housing are well understood. Look carefully at the DIY work that's been done on the HD600, HD800, Fostex, etc. There are very clear reasons for all of that. Controlling cup resonance, damping in front of the driver, behind the driver, different materials, cup volume and pads (huge one here) and baffle construction should all be taken into account. You have a huge toolbox beyond just making great drivers in pretty housings. Sometimes a well-damped closed or sem-open headphone has a more pleasing transient or tuning effect than an open version. Be open to experimenting even when the headphone sounds really good to get it even better. You'll discover all sorts of unexpected surprises when messing about. And don't be afraid to try weird materials of combinations. Most of them will end up sounding worse, but the experimentation will be worth it for the 1 trick that sounds awesome. Combine the acoustical knowledge of pioneer with the clever obssesiveness of a diyer and you should get a pretty kick-butt headphone. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

Best of luck to you.

 

I had a pair of those. Look really nice, sounds ok. Pretty comfortable. Sold them though...

 

oh shit
always wanted TAD headphones

 

Make the entire line except noise cancelling and/or BT models to sound as natural as can be with classical yet have punchy enough bass and extended yet smooth non peaky highs so that it plays well with rock and pop. Make it sound as coherent as possible with no holes in the entire audioband and no ringing then you got yourself a winner! The more expensive models and the cheaper ones having the same basic sound but maybe only difference in overall dynamics, low level detail, and refinement.

 

Yep, that smooth Pioneer sound that sounds good with every genre of music. Get that right and you are on the right track...

 

Hey @musiqlovr, how's everything going?
Any news regarding the new headphones?

 

I’m in agreement on the “TAD” trickle down, a la Focal. Speaking of Focal, my “perfect” headphone will have the claitity and dynamics of a Utopia, and the soundstage and bass slam of an Abyss 1266.

 

Get HD600 and HD650.

Notice HD600 otherworldly concoction of clarity, speed, fullness of spectrum, richness of ultra fine, silky microdetail and most importantly a raw, effortless cohesiveness/transparency/organic-quality to the whole sound. Pure black magic. Outstanding balance. Genius tuning. They did not lie, this is Pure sound. Always.

Now notice how the "technically superior" HD650, while smoother, sounds alot less natural, as if tuned by a computer. Worse clarity, sharp mid treble separated from and surrounded by overly holographic and ethereal mids, yet weirdly dark top octave. Distracting midbass that is only there to hide subbass distortion, but just ends up making everything sleepy. Overall veiled. Epic fail of a headphone... Well... Ok, it's still better price to performance than all the other over-priced junk, but a huge step down from the supreme HD600 at the same time. I'm not exaggerating, every time I try to trick myself into liking HD650 for whatever amount of time and then put on HD600 right after, I am invariably awestruck by the grand transparency, organic thing, ONEness and engagement. It's tragic how on the HD650 box it says "makes music come alive" when in fact it sucks the soul out of everything. A headphone truly made for terminal cancer patients who need something to put them to sleep. Or to showcase how humanity has peaked with this tremendous example of marketing ruining a legend and replaceing it with a fad. A chick with make up. A dancing bear. HD600 has no make up and is no dancing bear. It is raw and wild. In a beautiful way! Not savage, just a wild, ultra composed alpha male.

Extra note 1: Notice how Sennheiser are not afraid to trade bass distortion performance and extention in for openness.

Extra note 2: If you are NOT making a portable headphone, then it HAS to be high impedance and/or low sensitivity. You can't cheat the laws of physics if you want true fidelity and fine microdetail.

 

Which laws of physics are you referring to, specifically? I don't recall covering "microdetail' nor "fidelity" at school. It kinda sounds like you are talking shit.

Impedance has nothing to do with power, but it means more voltage is needed to generate that power, so portable devices are going to struggle. Poor sensitivity also means more power (and so voltage) is needed. Hence the trend for manufacturers towards both higher sensitivity and lower impedance.

 

What does this have to do with Pioneer?

 

I have phantasizised of such an animal for some time. Not with a f-ing piezo tweeter and random PET bass driver.
A concentric multidriver: large super rigid biocellulose or alu midbass + fabric tweeter sitting in place of the dustcap, just like conc speaker drivcer, with passive xo.
Obviously with dynamic voice coil motor.

 

@bengo Lower impedance means heavier voice coil. There's your theory. On the practical side @purr1n said drivers of the same model but with different impedance versions generally sound better on the higher impedance version. Such as beyers. Or various speaker drivers.

@JustAnotherRando It has to do with the guy wanting to produce real, quallity headphones and my suggestion was that he pay special attention to Sennhaiser since they do so many things right at the same time, including price, build, serviceability and especially technical ability and balances. Many people would agree that the HD sennheisers are benchmarks both in the price bracket AND regardless of price. Especially HD600, that kind of phenomenon happens once in a species.

@Priidik I think I have contributed a valuable, on topic view based mostly on my own experience. Do you have a specific criticism?

 

Only relevant lines for the current topic are your 'extra notes'.
All before it could belong into one of the HD6xx shilling/hating threads.

Spoiler: noise

Even there it should be considered noise or potential malicious attempt at shit slinging.

 

Makes own opinion out to be the truth using shitty prose
Uses ad hominem attack
"Valuable, on topic view"...

 

Hmm. Ok, I think I got it. In hindsight I should have focused on conveying how easy it is to destroy magically tuned sound by changing it only a little. And that even if all the technicalities are there, intangibles such as organic, cohesive, engaging, alive, etc might still be missing. I was shocked at how much consistently inferior the 6XX felt to me plus I get emotional about the 600's prowess so I got excited about sharing and kinda spammed about it here and there while still grasping the differences. It felt important to me. And I think it is relevant here because the guy said he is aiming for special sound, not just another expensive headphone.

 

@JustAnotherRando Ok, NOW what did I do? My last comment, what part of it do you disagree with? I took a step back and explained the motives behind my actions. Try to argue against that, I dare you. Passively lableing my comments as dislikable is not constructive. The other dislikers at least gave me valid reasons and/or furthered the discussion.

@sfoclt , anything specific?

@Ash1412 Fair enough, I should have included more "IME" instead of preaching so much. But I still stand by "Valuable, on topic..."