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Miracles in Audio, by luck, by good choices,by design or by tweaking...

I owned a low cost headphone for many years, the Fostex TH7B, first version( a new one close version exist Fostex TH7BK), semi-open headphone...I was never completely satisfied by any headphones I ever owned: Hifiman 400, Stax basic lamda, Stax 5 gold,Akg 340,Akg 701, beyerdynamic 990, and T150... Because in each of them with all their qualities I never listen to at the same times, a confortable headphone with natural timbre and voicing, with a good imaging and a realistic soundstage(not too close to my ears)...


For the last days I tweaked this Fostex, to damp his internal resonance I used sorbothane, I put some shungite stones at the exterior part of the cups and I use some Herkimer diamond in the interior pads( 3 at 120 degree) … Now this low cost headphones crush all my others if I sum all his qualities... For example his mids and voicing cannot beat the AKG 340 but among all my other headphones it is the best that is near that mids and it is more confortable, and with longer cable than the 340...His imaging is better and more realistic than the 340 etc etc...It is the same if I compare with the others...


His most important qualities is natural timbre and clear imaging,very precise pinned point accuracy and natural, so clear it crush for that ALL the others to dust...In the French audio circle the reviews were more than very positive few years ago...Diapason d’or and choc Classica...I am not the only one impressed buy the ratio quality/price... But remember that thesae reviewers dont tweak their headphone...The difference between before and after the tweaks are staggering...


Yes Miracles happens in Audio: cost is under 100 American dollars... Few years ago they cost me 50 bucks new... I never dreamed that I will go back to headphones...


I will enjoy your miracles stories of any kind ….My best to all...
128x128mahgister
glupson
7,842 posts
 

mahgister,


Thanks for the reply. In the end, "not able to afford Hi-fi sound" seems not to be the case, or at least your focus, these days. That sentence implied that money for more expensive equipment was the issue and tweaking was an attempt to improvise and improve the sound at much lower cost. If I understand it correctly now, you are actually not interested in obtaining those "unaffordable pieces" regardless of you personal funds situation which makes my previous suggestion completely miss the target.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,206 posts
 
You are right, I am no more in a state of absolute frustration... I can dream for sure about for example the Berning amplifier, but it is not necessary for me to buy one, because addressing this hi-fi dream with low cost tweaks I enjoy myself with a homemade musicality gained by my own experiments... It is not absolute TOTL HI-FI, but I dont give a damn if I enjoy my audio system at last...


And the margin of improvement between my music quality now and more costly product would not be so high (law of diminishing returns) and would be way less high than the big differences between my system few years ago and the same system tweaked now... This difference is way more bigger with the tweaks than the difference between my actual Sansui amplifier out of the box and the Berning amplifier I had dream about... This is because my tweaks are very efficient to gives me the desired results: acceptable musicality for my ears...
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,206 posts
 
a funny experience:

I needed 2 plate of shungite for a tweak on my T10 headphone and none were free of use...

I decide to take back 2 that block the hole of unused plate of 2 wall warts...Unused wall wart must be address because they interact with the E.M. field of the audio room... I takes them off yesterday, but today it seems that finally I will not keep them for the T10, then I place them back where they were the day before... Guess what? the sound quality improve a little and the sound came back like it was,but I did not feel the degradation when I remove them because I was on headphone.....It is my impression...Placebo effect? I dont think so...

Shungite is very efficient at this location and I will add copper thin foil also ...
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,206 posts
 
I place a shungite "elite" variety piece on the usb connector of one of my S.G. and the sound begins to be more "fluid"...(it replace the tourmaline piece I remove for my jack Fostex T10 headphone and the T10 is so good already that it best all my other headphone even before adequate damping yet)

This change only is like the audible change when I add a very good cable interconnect in my system, the same order of magnitude change... Why placing only one piece shungite noble variety (the priciest shungite) on a S.G. passively connected to my grid of stones has a so great effect?


All my audio system is so sensible now that if I change the location of a piece of stone or crystals it is like changing the tube in a tube amplifier to choose the delicate, more pleasurable, "distorsion" of the sound... This is exactly so...

Or it is like my grid became a sort of "potential equalizer", but a super equalizer that can add for example a third dimension imaging power to an headphone or a speaker and not only modifying the frequencies...It is exactly that effect which I make in taping around the jack end of the cable of my T10 these stones together: tourmaline, shungite, Herkimer, chrysocolla beads , lava beads...All that together produced a metamorphosis of the imaging power of the T10 and a better natural timbre so much, that this T10 became my dearest best headphone now before even I complete yet the upgrading with some damping methods...


Nobody knows why, but my ears are glad even without explanation...
mahgister's avatar
mahgister OP
13,206 posts
 
Indeed it is more fun to play with stones , and more impactful on a variety of attributes of the sound than buying a 10,000 dollars tubes amplifier, because I can also fine tune the sound, like changing tubes, but at very low cost...

And I am sure that the effect is more impactful...Because you know, I already own a TOTL amplifier, the vintage sansui AU 7700, and this Q-TRON amplifier that I dream about some years ago will crush it perhaps but not by a margin so large to overshadow it completely especially if i compare this change with the upgrading effect of the grid of stone in my audio system and on my actual amplifier potential revelatory quality...


I am fond of geology now it seems... :)


I hope some of you will think about, room treatment, vibrations controls, and cleaning the electro-magnetic grid of your house before any other expanses, this is the only justification for my rant here... I apologize for the feverish metaphorical rhetoric of my audio obsession here, but you will pardon me if you go with my advice...
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