New LTS V10 and V10Pro headphones

Hello again everyone,

Bringing some news regarding my little project.

I've been away from social media for quite a while now, mostly because I've been extremely occupied in med school, and I've been building the current headphone models on the side, and with the costs of production during the pandemic skyrocketing, meaning profits from making them were minimal, I didn't do much promotion and didn't introduce any new models. That being said, I've learned a lot from building the headphones and found many places where improvements could be made. I've been working on several new models, the new V10/V10Pro are the first ones. The pricing of 3D printing and CNC machining was going through a bit of a wild phase in the last 2 years, literally doubling up in a matter of a few months at one point, so I had to wait for prices to calm down before releasing a new model. Costs of production are now back to where they were pre-pandemic, more or less, so it's a good time to start the production and have them start shipping right in time for winter holidays.





So what is the V10/V10Pro?



First of all, it's a model based on the V2, combining some V1 mechanical characteristics and V3 acoustic qualities together into one package, and fully utilizing all I've learned in the past 2+ years of building these headphones in order to design a headphone that's even more well-rounded and polished, it takes my favorite parts from the previous models and combines them into one headphone, and adds some new features as well.



It's an open back full-sized headphone with 100mm diameter ear pads, it has the same headband and headband size adjustment geometry as the V2/V3, with an updated design of the headband pieces, and with an overall earcup design that combines the best of the V1 and V2 into one. Firstly, a lot of people who bought the V1 praise it for its build quality and the feeling of solidity. This is what this headphone is meant to provide as well, an extremely rigid, rock solid chassis, even more so than on the V2 and V3. I wanted to combine that V1 build quality with a full sized headphone here. The second feature is the hidden internal hinge mechanism, just like on the V1. This makes the aesthetics more minimalistic, clean and beautiful, and also protects all the moving parts. It also made the internal design of the headphone pretty tight, this is without a doubt the most complex headphone I've designed to date, fitting the hinge mechanism inside the headphone was an exercise in efficiency. There's not a spare millimeter of space inside the cup, and really I mean that. The entire shape of the cup is styled in 3D, it's not just angled from front to back, but from bottom upwards as well, we'll come to the reason why later on.





Third thing to note, is the new button on the bottom of the cups. No, I didn't go digital, this is a new feature I'm introducing called ATM, or Acoustic Tuning Mechanism, available on the V10Pro model. It's a completely analogue tuning mechanism, which allows you to manually adjust the sound balance through an external slider, without even taking the headphones off. The mechanism works on the same principle as the rubber tuning plugs I've used on the V2 and V3 designs. It literally opens or closes two ports on the baffle in various increments, creating more or less obstruction to airflow, and thus modifying the <1000Hz range by up to 10 dB at about 90dB listening level. In fact, the holes, when fully opened, are the same size as the largest holes on the rubber plugs on the V2 and V3 models, so, you get the same range of adjustment as you do on those, except here, you don't have to take the headphones off, take off the earpads, and replace physical parts on the headphone. It's all done through a sliding mechanism with a slick stepped mechanism using a spring ball to hold the adjustment mechanism in place with satisfying clicks, just like the headband adjustment mechanism. The internals of the mechanism are laser cut stainless steel parts for durability reasons. The central position will be a neutral setting, and from there allows you to go up or down in bass, still staying within reason in both directions. To my knowledge this is the first open-back headphone to do that. There's a couple of closed headphones using adjustable ports on the cups, which is an entirely different acoustic effect and usually causes non-linear changes all over the FR spectrum. As proven on the V2 and V3 already, my system of adjusting the size of baffle ports does it in an entirely linear way and literally doesn't affect anything above 1000Hz, which is exactly how you want your bass adjustment to be done. Just like the hidden hinge mechanism, this adjustment mechanism was super difficult to fit without it taking up precious space, in the end I've managed to do it without sacrificing anything.



There will be a cheaper basic version of the headphone, the regular V10, without this mechanism, that will feature rubber plugs for the baffle like the older models, and still allow you to adjust the sound, albeit not with the headphones on your head. In every other way, the headphone will be identical to the Pro model. I really like the idea of being able to do that, listening to various music, you know that all albums are recorded differently and sometimes you just want a bit more fullness to the sound, or a bit less, and this allows you to accomplish that without having to fiddle with equalizers. A new album starts playing, you think it's a bit thin, click the adjuster up a few notches and that's it, problem fixed in 2 seconds, without any effect on the rest of the frequency spectrum, without making the sound muddy, or losing clarity, detail, speed, etc. Just like on the V2 and V3, but even I have to admit I didn't always feel like taking the pads off to replace parts, which is what triggered me to design a mechanism that can be used on the run to begin with.



Acoustically, this headphone is based on the V2, and by that I mean it's near identical to it in terms of the distance of the driver to the ear, it uses the same drivers, the same earpads, it has the same exact shape and volume of the front acoustic chamber, but with a bit more openness for an even cleaner sound, and uses the same acoustic mesh filters. That's why the frequency response and the rest of the measurements on paper will be pretty much identical between the V2 and V10 (depending on the tuning port openness of course), and that's what I wanted, as the V2 is to me, especially after daily using them for the past year, the more well-rounded headphone in terms of frequency response if we compare the V2 and V3 models, with the one clear benefit of the V3 being the soundstage due to more angled drivers. That's what the V10 improves. The design of the baffle and an integration with the cup here, creates an even more rigid assembly than before, for even less resonance, not that there was much of it present before. The rear grill has 10% more open area than the V2 as well, for an additional improvement in acoustics. Another change is the angle of the driver. This is something I've played with in the past and found that it subjectively improves the soundstage and frontal projection. It's a driver that's not just angled from front to back, but also slightly (3 degree) tilted from bottom up, with a slightly offset position in the forward and downward direction, so it fires towards the ears from front and slightly down to back and up. It's a subtle angle relative to the vertical plane, but it's a definite difference. We're used to this when listening to our surroundings, because some of the sound we hear doesn't arrive at our ears directly from the source, but bounces off the chest and shoulders, hitting the outer ear from a downwards direction. The front-back angle is also increased relative to the V2, and is now virtually the same as on the V3. This essentially means the V10 is a V2 with a cleaner and tighter sound, the same super flat FR, and amazing soundstage from the V3.

I'm still using the same old Peerless driver, I've tried and tested many drivers over the last 2 years and haven't found anything as well rounded and good sounding that didn't come out of a high end established manufacturer headphone. Same goes for Beyerdynamic T1 gen2 ear pads, the more I use them, the more I like them, so I stuck with them as the default options.



The next thing I wanted to create was a more efficient production while also increasing build quality, and with all the changes and new features, I've managed to achieve reduced assembly complexity even though the parts themselves are more complex, but that doesn't matter, since they're produced using technologies that don't care about the part complexity. On top of it I've done several designed updates to critical parts like hinges and sliding mechanisms on the headband for improved durability, and the headband pieces were also redesigned in terms of esthetics, making them fit with the V10 style a bit better.

The materials used in the builds will still be the same high quality carbon fiber and glass fiber reinforced PA12 materials printed on state of the art SLS and MJF printers, at an even higher quality than before, since the 3D printing tech and materials moved on a bit as well due to constant incremental improvements that industry is making. The headphone parts printed today are slightly, but noticeably better than those printed 2 years ago for example, the finish and consistency of the textures, colors, dimensional tolerances etc. are just slightly better. I've also gotten better at painting the parts considering the fact that I've done the process so many times by now, found new tricks and methods for post-processing, etc.



What's been taken off? The earpad rings. I know that the way of attaching ear pads on the V2 and V3 with the rotating ring mechanism is nice and quick, but it was necessary on those headphones because you needed to take the pads off to adjust the sound via the rubber plugs. Here, it's not needed anymore, you basically never have to take the pads off unless you're replacing them, so the complicated attachment mechanism is out, replaced by the good old lip that pads fit over like on most headphones. It's simple and it works.

The plan is to start production of the parts by the end of September so I'm trying to up the parts numbers as much as possible to reduce the cost per unit, and of course the rest of the stuff can be accessed through my website.

Of course since every headphone is hand made and hand finished, I'll be doing all kinds of customization and custom paint jobs as with the older LTS models, including builds with different drivers, grills, ear pads, etc. as per custom requests.

That's pretty much it, I won't go into much depth regarding the LTS project itself, as that was covered in the original post made way back, for the new people who may have missed it, you can read up on the background of the project.

 

How about a loaner for the site?

 

Looks great! for anyone interested I have received a single-use 10% off code from Tomislav for being a past customer. PM me and you can have it.

you forgot to mention the price I think:

(available from €549 + €60 shipping)

 

As a previous owner as well, i have been in communication with @Tomislav_L about this new model. I will eventually (or hopefully) get one and compare with my heavy modified V3 (it's different from the standard V3).

I will even throw a JAR650B in the mix since many love these.

 

Do tell.