E-Mu Walnut Mods (Also Creative Aurvana Live)

See original impressions and measurements here.

These are pretty good stock, but I wanted to see if I could make them a bit more neutral, yet keep a bit of a bass boost, and refine the upper-end. If lucky, maybe I could see a reduction in bass distortion too.

Here is what I did.

1. Put some Dynamat behind the driver magnet and around the edge of the driver on the rear side. Highlighted the spot around the edge of the driver. Added a horseshoe-shaped piece of 1/8" open-cell charcoal foam around the back of the driver as seen in the pic.




2. Put some strips of Creatology adhesive foam on the plastic edge of the cups, internally. Should offer a tiny bit of reflection and resonance control.




3. Put some bath mat material in the bottom of the cups. Not adhered or anything.




4. Used about 1/2" to 1" thick, to taste, of UltraTouch Denim Insulation inside the cups (multi-purpose roll, R6.7). I settled around 2/3" thick.




5. 1/4" disk of open-cell charcoal foam over the driver, front side. This stays in place relatively well when you put the pads on, since it sort of grips the existing foam donut around the front of the driver. I tried some toilet paper and similar material, but that raised the ~3KHz bump too much and while it did lower the relative treble levels, it didn't smooth out some of the peakier aspects. Sometimes toilet paper or similar is just what you need. Sometimes you need something like open-cell foam instead, the latter of which helps smooth and attenuate the upper-mids and treble rather than just attenuate the treble.




Stock measurements:






Modded measurements:






Subjectively, they are still a bit rough sounding, and this inherent nature of the headphone/driver stands out a bit more now due to the relatively reduced bass levels and distortion. In particular, the 3KHz spot is a bit hot sounding. But, it's still quite acceptable. Still a relatively easy to listen to headphone, just more balanced and neutral sounding now. Cleaner and more cohesive. Bass in particular is much improved.