50mm driver into HD800 chassis

Some time ago, @E_Schaaf gave me a beat up pair of hd800, without the drivers , so I thought why not design a custom baffle that I can fit any 50mm drivers onto it. So after couple iterations, here’s what I came up with so far:



I’ve been so busy with work, I finally had some time to work on some ideas I had. I also took out the stupid proprietary connectors and put in a pair of 3.5mm jacks for ease of use.

Driver distance to the ear is a lot closer as well so you don’t get the diffuse staging with weird mids. Still images beautifully like an hd800, which is real nice. I played with the rear vents mainly to control airflow and settled with what you see in the pictures.

soundwise, they sound closer to 6x0 with some attributes from hd800 and with graphene timbre. And guess what, I got it to rumble with satisfying subbass without the help of downslope FR. Neutral freaks will be happy I think

obviously this is not something I recommend widely to everyone, but I thought I share this with the community for the fun of it haha @Bill-P ’s also sending me some of his shells for me to try so I’m pretty excited! Thanks for lookin’ and happy holidays SBAF fam

 

Cool!

Which 3.5mm jacks did you use?

 

Not sure if you want to use these because I had to use the dremel to widen the hole a bit…

 

Just curious, as the Schurter ones I sourced were too fat to fit, but maybe with the driver removed they wouldn't interfere.

Nice work! Happy Holidays!

 

Here you go, lmk if you have more questions
https://www.amazon.com/Longdex-Ster...640496117&sprefix=3.5mm%20jack,aps,122&sr=8-2

 

This is how it measures currently with miniDSP EARS + SBAF Comp. @E_Schaaf already gave me some helpful feedback on how I can improve on this so I'm very excited for the tuning paper dots

Here's my hd800Graphene vs. modded hd600 I measured long time ago for reference:


I've been listening to this pair all day yesterday, and no hint of sibilance despite what the graph shows even when I crank it to 80-90db. It's slightly bothersome that if I don't find the sweet spot in positioning, the tip of my ears sometimes touch the housing, but not a big deal.

 

Mushroom shaped front baffle + tuning paper dots with different density it's awesome sauce

- mushroom-shaped baffle definitely helps with the front wave reflections and makes it sound more direct than diffuse
- tuning dots with different density allows me to fine tune the airflow in every dot location. No wonder @E_Schaaf loves using this