Fun with vintage headphones

Audio friends, I'm new here, but I enjoyed reading the entire thread. Thanks!

I've had a pair of HD540s laying in a bin for 15 years or so that my stepdad gave me for reasons I now forget. Probably because I tinker, and he isn't the kind of person to fix things. The foam was nonexistent, and all the stitching on the headband is ripped up, but they're otherwise excellent. I had no idea they were so well-regarded!

I bought a synthesizer and wanted to get into mixing and mastering and figured I should shine these up. I bought fenestrated pleather pads from brainwavz and a cable shorter than the distance from the Earth to the Moon with a red marker for the right (mine don't seem to have the red plastic tab on the headband). It seems they're the 600 Ohm variant, though what I assume is a 6 looks very much like a G in the stamp on the baffle.

So here are a few hundred dollar questions from a synthwave-loving, non-obsessive audiophile that hates his Grado RS2s, loves his Airpods Pro, and rarely goes above 65dB while listening to anything:

1) 600 Ohms! Do I really, truly need a DAC/AMP? I have an early-gen Dragonfly, and I swear, for the life of me, I can't hear any difference between it and my Macbook Pro 3.5mm jack on these cans (e.g. listening to Blinding Light at 320kbps, 44.1kHz). Zero, none, at the same volume (maybe 40% on the Dragonfly, 60% on MBP), but it uses up a USB port. On my synthesizer they sound loud as clear as well, unamplified around 40% volume.

I don't *get* the whole DAC/AMP thing. I guess they make it louder with less distortion, but what if you don't listen very loud to start? Am I hearing distorted sound, or will they actually make it sound better at the same output level? The latter would be worth it to me, but I've never experienced it. What's a portable, inexpensive, but smart purchase in this case? FiiO BTR3/5?

2) I was eyeing HD600s, or 6XXs. Should I not even bother, do I already have the better cans? The 540s are insanely lightweight. What would be best for 80s/synthwave/electronic?

Long post, thanks for reading and any guidance/wisdom shared! (^_^)

 

One of the myths of high impedance headphones is that they are harder to drive but they are actually easier. It needs higher voltage but current requirements are much lower. Higher loads also have much lower distortion too. This is also why tube amps pair well with high impedance headphones since they do better with high impedance drivers.

The issue though is that if you try to drive the volume to comfortable levels on a typical lower voltage amp, you might end up clipping the amp which will eventually destroy the headphones. Not likely to be a problem with the Dragonfly or MBP, but something to be aware of.

 

Can you explain more about how they destroy the headphones? I'm particularly interested because I have a bunch of antique headphones with impedance measured in the thousands of ohms.

 

It's all about transference of energy. In regular operation, you have your electrical signal which in turn moves your transducer. This effectively converts electrical energy into mechanical (in this case acoustic) energy. When you clip an amplifier, that signal gets chopped off at the top and bottom. During those flat parts, if your transducer is matching the signal that means it isn't moving. No movement means no mechanical energy. So where does all that electrical energy go? It converts straight into heat. Lots of heat into thin voicecoil wiring eventually spells the end of the transducer.

 

If you have an amp with somewhat low voltage rails (+/- 2V) and high gain (>3x) and you are using a hot source (>2V), then you would be amplifying a signal past what it's capable of doing and would result in a clipped signal. This is DC voltage and is never good for devices meant for AC voltages

Be sure to use an amp with high enough voltage to avoid clipping. Schiit Magni 3+ has 16V rails and 5.5x gain. With a source like Bifrost on 5.5x gain it results in +/- 15.5V output on max volume. However this is an extreme scenario that might only be encountered on very inefficient headphones.

Do not use the O2 amp with a 2V source on high gain however. With the arrangement of the pot after amplification, you end up with a clipped signal no matter how low the volume is.

 

This is good advice.

The other option is just to clip the high gain resistors to switch between low gain and no gain. Only so much current gain you can get out of two op amps.

 

Yamaha HP1 (modded)

general information



Truthfully I don't want to bother writing a lot of background information on these as there is a ton of information about them online and I am lazy. In the mid 1970s, during the zenith of Japanese supremacy in the home audio market, Yamaha developed a line of orthodynamic headphones with some very advanced transducer technology for that time. On top of that, they contracted Mario Bellini (apparently some famous italian guy) to design them. The end result was a pretty iconic headphone that still stands the test of time.

A few years after its release the HP-1 was renamed to the YH-1 with some minor design updates, though from what I'm told the performance is largely the same. There is also a version of the HP-1 dubbed 'anisotropic' which has a stronger magnetic system.

You can read more about the HP-1 here:
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...-rp18-and-yahama-yh-1-yh-3-orthodynamic.9208/
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/the-vintage-ortho-thread.2340/
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-yamaha-hp1-headphones



subjective impressions

My pair was graciously modded by @rhythmdevils gratis, so thank you very much for that! I never heard these stock so I can't comment on their performance that way. I hope RD can chime in with a summary of the mods and what they do versus the stock sound.

I paid $100 for this pair and another $20 for a new headband. For about $120, this headphone kicks ass, though it needs some juice to perform. I initially plugged it into the headphone jack of a 70s Marantz receiver thinking it would be fun to have a period correct match. The performance was so poor I thought I had wasted my money, it wasn't until I plugged it into my big hybrid amp that I saw what these were all about.

Anyone who knows me knows I have been #teamdynamic since I got into headphones in 2016. Lately I have tried to be more open-minded and I am very glad I took a punt on these as they are able to do what no other ortho has: give me goosebumps. The biggest draw of the HP1 is its sweet tone, especially in the midrange. It's a little rolled off in both frequency extremes, but in a forgiving 'vintage' way. I have yet to find a recording that sounded 'bad' on them, and many sound really good.

But they go beyond just being budget all-rounders. Most importantly, they have the traits of 'immediacy' and 'crunch', something that is sorely lacking in most planar headphones I have tried. To me this is what makes music interesting to listen to, versus just an amalgamation of high resolution sounds.



That's pretty much all I have to say. They score a 7 or 8 in most areas when properly amped. Amping is a tough question, they deserve better than today's insipid solid-state designs. The best solution will probably be a hybrid amplifier to provide a low-impedance, high-current output. You can run them off of a speaker amp as well.

I got curious if these sounded good just because they were vintage, so I went to my local dealer to demo the Audeze LCD2C and LCD3. The LCD2C was unlistenable trash, and the LCD3 was a little better in some technical areas than the Yamaha's but fell apart at high volume and was dull in the midrange where the HP1s were immediate and lively.

Cons: even with mods there is a tiny bit of roughness in the lower treble at high volume, but nothing like unmodded HE-500s for example. Not the final word in sparkle but they do have some good air. Not the final word in subbass but they don't feel lacking! You get the picture. Only real fault is my drivers have some resonance when certain frequencies are excited. I only detect this in 1 out of 10 recordings and it's pretty benign. @rhythmdevils mentioned this is just luck of the draw and some pairs are better than others.

Comfort is great. Despite being on-ear I can wear them for hours, the cups have some solid weight to them but the headband design is brilliant and the suspension distributes weight softly and lightly on your head. A+

I want to try a NAD RP18 next.

 

I would help with that except one of my drivers is damaged, bass rolls off early. You dont happen to have a spare driver do ya @rhythmdevils ? I might sell mine. Unmodded except pads.:



Fostex T30 (modded) also good.:


Top dawg vintage ortho on eBay, Sansui SS100.

 

For anybody with busted HD250 drivers who's wondering: The HD430 drivers are not the same.

HD430:


HD250 - a bit hard to see in the photo but quite '3D' shaped, with a larger diameter dome and coil:


It'd be tough to transplant them between cages without busting the lead-out wires anyway. This 250 looks like it's already been repaired once, with multi-strand wires coming from the driver to the terminal block. In the stock configuration, the single skinny-as coil wires go all the way to the terminal block (see photo here).

Didn't want to remove the rear foams from the HD430s because they seem like they'd fall apart. New pads & front foams on the way for these; will report here or in the other thread.

 

Sennheiser HD580 Precision



general information

Not too much to say about these that most don't already know so I will keep it brief. Introduced in 1993, the HD580 (tagline 'Precision') was the first consumer headphone from Sennheiser to sport the new 'oval' housing design that had been developed for the famous HE90 Orpheus electrostatic headphones. The driver was a continuation of the successful combination of mylar film/aluminum voice coil/neodymium magnet that Sennheiser had been sporting in their dynamics since the 80s. Notable changes absent from the earlier HD540/560/250 include much thicker voice coil wire, a plastic piece mounted in front of the driver (likely for diffusion), and a modified spider to allow the driver to sit in its new oval-shaped baffle.

A French catalog from 95/96 shows the HD580. On the previous page, the baby Orpheus HE60.


This headphone was a massive commercial success for Sennheiser, with early reviewers praising it for its accurate sound and lack of tonal coloration (certainly deserved compared to headphones of the day!). It would be carried well into the late 2000s in Sennheiser's catalog, though the exact date they stopped manufacturing them remains unclear to me. I also believe they were flat out discontinued at one point in the early 2000s but then brought back due to popular demand, but I have no official citation for this.

There is a weird cult of people out there obsessed over the various revisions of this headphone so I won't write anything here about that. I will just say that I personally owned 5 pairs and they all sounded different despite looking outwardly the same. I also have a hunch that the 'reissue' HD580s sold alongside the HD600 & HD650 in the 2000s used B-stock HD600 drivers, but this is just conjecture. By that point they retailed for about 50% less than the HD600 and were very much marketed as a lower cost option, for good reason which we will see in the next section.

It can still be seen in Sennheiser's 2004 catalog:


Just know that if you intend to research the various revisions of this model on your own, there is a TON of misinformation out there, especially on head-fi and a few popular articles that still float around the internet. Good luck!

subjective impressions

I don't really care for these very much. Each pair I owned sounded either slightly or very different, but never interesting. The best examples do live up to their 'Precision' moniker, having a matter-of-fact presentation without much emphasis anywhere in the midrange, and a definite softening of the high treble and low bass.

Unfortunately they are just boring, and any time I listened to one I desperately wished it was a HD600 or HD650 again. This is because Sennheiser deliberately tuned the HD600 and HD650 to have a sound character of their own, something that makes them stand out and contrast with each other as well as other headphones in the market. The HD600 has a way of beautifying upper harmonics and was clearly devised with larger scale symphonic music in mind. The HD650 is the opposite, dampening upper harmonics for a focus on fundamentals and tilting taste towards popular and vocal music.

The HD580 has neither of these characteristics. The best example I had was an early production unit from 1993: it was polite, possessing kind of a plastic AM radio tone, erring towards congestion in busy passages due to poor transient performance. It didn't work for rock music at all. It was an elevator music kind of headphone. It did however have potential for modification. Replacing the rear grill with one from a HD600 helped a lot, but still very far from its younger brother, and this just comes down to the driver itself.

The worst example I had was a late production unit from right before the release of the HD600: it had all of the above flaws plus it was dirty sounding with very poor treble definition. Lows in general were MIA compared to the HD600 or HD650. The biggest flaw was a narrowing of the soundstage and overall claustrophobia that is helped somewhat by the grill swap but never fully.

The HD580 was cool when you used to be able to buy one for $150 and abuse it or mod it without caring. Recent hype has inflated the prices of even the most mediocre examples to the stratosphere. My advice is seriously to just buy a HD600 or HD650 instead. When I think about when this hype started, it was really around 2016, which makes perfect sense as this is when Drop released the HD6XX and the quality of new production HD600/650s declined sharply. It is no wonder that people went back to a de facto vintage model and started praising it as somehow being better than its younger siblings. Really though, if you read historical comparisons from when these headphones were all current, you get a much more accurate picture.

 

Sennheiser HD580 Jubilee



general information

Going to keep this one very short. In their 95/96 catalog for their 50th anniversary, Sennheiser revealed a limited version of the best-selling HD580 Precision called the Jubilee. It sported a neat carbon fiber finish (though the housing was still entirely plastic), a new name badge, a special box, and... and.. that's it. The cable was identical to the HD580. The driver was identical to the HD580.

There were only 4000 of these made. Due to their rarity, they command a lot of money and are snatched up quickly by collectors at auction. There is also some chatter on head-fi threads about these being the 'best ever' Sennheisers, with each copy personally being baptized by Axel Grell himself. Could it be true?

subjective impressions

These are the worst of the HD580/HD600/HD650 family I have ever heard.

Imagine all of the flaws that people commonly point out about this family of headphones: grain, haze, dirtiness, lack of definition, slow transients, veil, stunted attacks, limited frequency extension. Now imagine that they have all of that.

Imagine all of the praise people commonly point out about this family of headphones: lack of overt tonal coloration, high resolution, the ability to portray the differences between sound reproducing equipment and recordings. Now imagine they have much less of that than every example of the HD600 or HD650 I have owned except for the 2019 made in Romania units.

You now have the HD580 Jubilee.

One very common misconception about the Jubilee that is repeated ad nauseum, mostly by people who have never held one in their hands, is that this is 'basically' a HD600. And that Sennheiser 'basically' released a 'limited' run of the HD600 before 'actually' releasing the real HD600. This is patently false and actually makes zero historical sense. I have a first production HD600 with the store receipt from 1997. It sounds nothing like the HD580 Jubilee. The HD580 Jubilee's sound identical to the worst example of the HD580 I owned. They are a late production HD580 (1996) with a paint job. Unit variation? They only made like 4000 units. Some of my friends purchased Jubilees despite me begging them to not waste their money, and had the same findings. Leave this one for the fetishists and collectors.

 

RadioShack Pro35A (Koss KTXPRO)



In the early 2000s Koss manufactured a line of headphones for RadioShack. You can see many examples when searching for 'radioshack headphones' on that auction site. I was interested in trying some early production versions of the Koss favourites like the PortaPro and KSC35. My personal favourite Koss however is the lesser mentioned KTXPRO1. It turns out there was a RadioShack version of these too, called the Pro35A, and I managed to find a pair on eBay for $20.

These are really interesting. The box says Made in the USA, I'm not sure how much of that is true, but they have a much more solid and less flimsy construction than the current production Chinese-made KTXPRO1. For those unfamiliar, the KTXPRO1 sounds pretty similar to a HD600 in on-ear form, with a little Grado DNA. I guess that's why I like it so much. For reference, the KTXPRO1 slayed the Grado 325x for me.

The Pro35A has the same DNA as the new-made KTXPRO1, but much improved. The sound is more mature and refined, it's clear the classic Koss titanium driver in these is of a much higher construction quality than whatever they are putting in their new headphones. The new-made Koss sound extremely muddy and lacking in detail in comparison. The stage on them is flat, and the low frequencies are boosted by 5-6dB to give the impression of dynamics.

The Pro35A has air and can form an impressive stage between the listeners ears, reflecting the reverb and ambience of the recording. When switching to the Pro35A from the modern KTXPRO1, it sounds bass deficient until you realize it's just doing what a driver of this size in an enclosure of this size can do and you appreciate that it's not unnaturally boosted. There's a lot of crunch and bite for rock music, these are the closest I've come to the HD600s in on-ear form.

In terms of faults, the character of the titanium diaphragm can manifest itself a little bit in the form of shouting or sheen in the presence region, but I will take this any day of the week over the muffled characteristic of new-made Koss. I actually had a difficult time getting the Pro35A to sound right until recently when I plugged them directly into the headphone jack of a 2015 Macbook, and that is how I've had the best results. Dongles and headphone amps seem to just make them worse.

Overall these are a fairly resolving pair of on-ears with a somewhat forward and aggressive character that suits most genres well. They really are just the KTXPRO1 being sold now but better. If you're a fan of Koss headphones I suggest looking for vintage units on eBay as they were made with higher quality materials and drivers. I enjoy these out of the laptop headphone jack more than most 2-4 box headphone systems I've had the displeasure of auditioning. The fact that you used to be able to purchase headphones of this quality straight off the shelf of your local electronics store shows how depraved the modern personal audio market has become.

 

Update on the Koss Pro35A review from above. They are now my favourite headphones and I listen to them more than anything else straight from my 2015 iMac.

I mentioned that they could be shouty but after 100 hours of play it went away, I guess my pair was NOS and needed breaking in.

the biggest revelation came when I modified them to remove the in-line volume attenuator. the sound became much cleaner with less grain, less veil and greater dynamics. I went ahead and did this with all my Koss.

It's a simple modification that involves unsoldering and re-soldering 6 wires. the slider pot inside the plastic housing seriously eats clarity and does not have enough range to be useful, unless you are using it to watch TV or something.

 

I also tried a pair of Koss Pro35 (no A)

I guess that these are supposed to be the KTXPRO whereas the Pro35A are the KTXPRO1.
The build is even nicer than Pro35A, metal headband and faux leather suspension strap.
However they do not have KTXPRO DNA at all. They sound like PortaPro's.
Resolution is significantly higher than Pro35A, the driver is in a higher class. Bass extension is an octave lower. One Head-fi user described them like a car stereo on your head, and I would agree (in a very good way).

Unfortunately I still prefer the Pro35A, because of the upper mid tuning. The Pro35A is more present, and the Pro35 is a bit reticent in the upper mids. I listen to a lot of rock music, so I prefer the forward presentation of the Pro35A. Someone who likes the more laid-back PortaPro tuning and mid-bass emphasis will die for the sound of the Pro35. They are substantially better than newly-made PortaPro's. I just sold mine on craigslist.

I highly recommend these. Make sure to modify them to bypass the in-line attenuator.

 

JVC HA-D990 (1993)



These JVC headphones got my attention because they were Stereophile class Z or something in the early 90s, and they look pretty cool. I found a pair for $60 on eBay (thanks @Jh4db536 for helping me get them).

They sound pretty good. I was worried they would sound like Sony MDR or closed AT headphones, which is to say lean with a treble emphasis. Actually the sound is the opposite, the mid-band is juicy and rich and the treble is the area where they are deficient. Other than poor treble and presence region definition, where they can be described as 'dull' and 'splashy', the frequency response is balanced and they are very easy to listen to at high volumes.

The lower midrange and upper bass are very full and the word that keeps coming to mind is 'rich'. Vocals come forward in the mix but with an emphasis on the chest, not shout. Bass is acceptable. I don't know if it's because my pair are well used, but they have a very light clamping force. This makes them comfortable but also difficult to get strong bass response as they will not seal on the bottom of the ear.

I enjoy these a lot, they sound mostly correct in the mid-range (where it matters). Not high resolution phones but they do well for what they are. The best feature is excellent sensitivity, the specifications state 106db/mW, so you can run them from anything.

 

Grado SR80



general information

Sorry, I am too lazy to type up a history of Grado Labs. I think everyone knows what Grado's are and where they come from. What is interesting to me are the historical stereotypes and impressions associated with Grado headphones from the inception of the Prestige series in 1993 to the present day X series.

My first experience with Grados was the SR325x which are among the worst headphones I have heard. I bought it because of my infatuation with the Koss KTXPRO1, wanting to see how far the concept of on-ear headphones with minimal damping could be taken. Unfortunately the 325x is a terrible headphone, but that has nothing to do with being on-ear or having minimal damping. Thankfully I have a policy to try everything at least 3 times, so Grado got another shot, and I went for a vintage SR80 on eBay for $50.

There is quite a bit of lore about Grado revisions on Head-Fi, all documented by those who have walked the path before me. My particular SR80 is from the early 2000s, before the 'i' or 'e' versions came to market, but later than the 1990s, where some models sported 'pink' driver screens.

subjective impressions

These are my favourite headphones and I think where the headphone journey I started in 2015 stops for me. The critical quality that the SR80 have that almost every other headphone fails at for me is the trait of sound clarity.

I would define clarity as the intelligibility and detail of the sound, the ability to convey subtle intonations and relationships in music, the ability to convey the sound production and aesthetic of a recording and therefore a musical work. In other words, different recordings sound different, the subconscious and the heart have an easier time digesting music without cerebral (conscious) activity having to 'fill in the blanks'.

The perception of clarity is closely tied to the characteristics of immediacy (vividness and presence of the sound) and transients (the uninterrupted starting and stopping of independent and interrelated sounds). The SR80 is not perfect, after all it is a budget headphone with a lossy plastic housing, but it gets closer than anything else I've tried in these respects.

It tends to sound worse with amplification, as any additional components in the signal path reduce clarity, and some amplifiers may have further undesirable interaction with the transient behaviour and frequency balance of the headphone. Therefore I recommend plugging these straight into your computer, phone or iPod for best results.

Sonic flaws include a slightly nasal quality and an expected lack of sub-bass frequencies. The perception of nasality seems to disappear after a few songs, i.e. you get used to it. I cannot at all describe them as bright, shouty or shrill. In fact, due to a relative absence of time-domain smearing and ringing, they are a much more comfortable listen than you would imagine based on historical stereotypes.

I got excited at how good the SR80 were and tried the HP1000 and RS1 but I thought they were worse. I am certain that the 'i', 'e', and 'x' versions are also worse and were excuses for Grado to sell people the same headphone again with inferior build and sound. I may try the old SR325 and SR225 for fun but I am pretty satisfied with these as it is. I currently listen to headphones for 1 to 2 hours a week but these make that time magical.

 

How does the earliest version black paper screen HD650 compare to the later black silk version?

 

The earliest HD650 is very dark and claustrophobic. It's not a very good headphone unless you want a very tonally colored and cozy sound. The black silk ones have a lot of unit to unit variation. I only like the silver screen HD650s from a few years before the Drop 6XX.

 

Is the unit to unit variation of the black silks due to the black silk scraping off over time, or another reason?

 

I couldn't say just that I owned a few and all were different in some way. The period of 2012-2016 seem to be the most consistent performers. I will still take HD600 though.