Comments on Profile Post by Huhnkopf

Wish there were better measurements for it... Do you have a 900?

Used to have one, sold it in a sea of headphones. Kinda miss it, that's why the 909 came up during my search.

Brent Butterworth frustratingly has no measurements of the TH-900 that I can find, but extrapolating between his TH-909 and HP-3 measurements it seems the new model fixes the low-mid dip but keeps low treble peak?

https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1985:fostex-th909-headphones&catid=263&Itemid=203

Amazona states in their review that the Blue Sapphire TH-900 fixes the lower mid dip and a treble rise starting at 6,5khz (remember starting at 8khz here but I might be remembering wrong)

"Zum einen gibt es eine leichte Anhebung der Mitten zwischen 300 und 600 Hz und etwas gedämpfte Höhen ab dem Bereich um 6,5 kHz"

https://www.amazona.de/test-fostex-th-900-mk2-sapphire-blue/

Interesting how the new pinna has so much less upper midrange. Probably the headphone resting on the pinna.

@Golmang could be expectation bias, IIRC the only diff between TH-900 variants is urushi colour on cups. Only changes noted were detachable cables on Mk2.

@Serious Referring to Butterworth? Think you got it backwards, orange trace is new KB5000 and blue trace is the KB0065. Annoyingly he used orange trace for KB0065 on old comparative measurements like on HP-3 which is confusing.

You're right, thanks for catching that. Also makes more sense that way, since IME more distance from driver to ear = more upper mids. So if the older (less flexible) pinna moves less, that might result in a difference like that. Higher frequencies look more usable with the newer pinna aswell.

Oh wait oratory1990 has measurements of both TH-900 Mk2 and TH-909. Just ignore the compensated curve I guess, friggin Harman:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/493ho2z9dtsdoiw/Fostex%20TH900mk2.pdf?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/768j4ku1u8gi9b9/Fostex%20TH909.pdf?dl=0

No low mid dip and some extra ear canal gain area for "normal" sound, but low treble still has spike at same level relative to bass.

Ouch, that looks like I might even prefer the older one. Treble peak looks not-at-all-fixed and instead of 500Hz dip you now get a 1.5-2kHz dip?

I take offence to not preferring 1kHz dips to 500-600Hz! :P

Kidding aside yeah the 909 fixes some of the 900's issues but doesn't key it all in. I'm mostly curious how the semiopen configuration changes reverb character and resolution, plus "textures"

There's a very simple mod you can do to basically solve the treble peak on the 900s and X00s with most pads other than stock, I know the 909 has the same drivers as the 900 so a similar tweak might work just as well. Been meaning to get open cups built for my 900s...