The Wonderful LTS v3 Moddable Headphone

That 3k dip is the one i will try to raise. I will receive some materials and get to tweaking. These have so much potential (in small adjustments without going crazy or wasting 1 month trying).

Elex owners would love these, i definitely prefer them (from memory at least), since i got my foot tapping faster and more frequently.

 

Wow they are gorgeous headphones I can't believe this is a one man operation that started as a DIY project. Really nice work @Tomislav_L

 

Looking at these graphs is particularly interesting for me because it seems like my own DIY measurement rig isn’t as far off better setups as I thought it may be.

Also looking at it, I think the V2 would almost match the HD650 graph up to 5khz, but would then go up to a peak like the V3 instead of down, which kinda matches my memory of the 650’s too.

 

You might lose some bass but covering the magnet vent on the rear of the driver with a not completely obstructive filter (think foam or fuzz rather than tape) should mildly bring up the 3k area. Since the bass is adjustable on the baffle you will likely still have some useable range there after making that tweak. No matter what you do to the drivers they will start to gently roll below 80hz or so. You could also remove the paper on the edge driver vents but that'd give you more lower mids and upper bass, but also allow you to use a denser cover on the rear magnet hole to tune the mids without reducing bass as much. I only ever use peerless drivers that way, but since I'm not as familiar with the enclosure design here, YMMV.

I see no reason not to go ham with mods when you can just swap out the drivers on a whim for cheap. Order a bunch and stack the magnets to see if that helps with the extension in such an open design like this! Those Peerless really are incredible performers for the price.

 

Yep, this is exactly how the mids are brought up, already have several types of SAATI acoustic mesh filters on the way to @Walderstorn for that purpose. Or to put it exactly, there are two ways to do it behind the driver on this design, one is by putting filters directly onto the driver, and the other is by using a filter under the black grill on the cup behind the driver, so you aren't just blocking the central port on the driver, but also affecting how opened the entire acoustic chamber behind the driver is. This can also be done by stuffing the chamber with polyfill, angel hair, felt, or any of the multiple types of speaker cabinet filling materials, but I prefer to use the acoustic mesh specifically designed for this purpose, they make it easier to control the sound compared to cabinet filling materials. By default I install a pretty transparent acoustic mesh over the central opening on the driver magnet to add a bit of tightness to mid bass, and the same filter under the grill on the cup, to keep things pretty opened, it only blocks like 10% of airflow (with the metal grill itself blocking about 35%), but I have mesh that blocks 15, 20, 25, 42 and 80%, so possibilities are endless. Even when losing significant amounts of bass due to blocking the rear of the driver in order to bring out the mids, it's easy to compensate for that by simply having more dense mesh on the baffle around the driver, which brings the lower end up again. It's all about this balance of what happens behind and in front/around the driver. All of the openings around the driver are covered with the 42% blocking mesh by default too, so by putting on the 80% mesh onto the baffles instead, the bass can go up significantly, there's headroom to go to the extremes.

The default tuning is kind of in the middle in terms of the range of adjustments possible, I've purposefully designed the physical components with that in mind, to make sure that the base design of the cups (such as size of the enclosed ear pad volume, size of the openings on the baffle, size and shape of the chamber behind the driver, etc.) would allow the headphone to have plenty of adjustment room to push it towards different sound signatures. And don't forget, this is a headphone that is not just designed with these Peerless drivers in mind, the driver holders are entirely removable and different ones for a totally different driver can easily be designed and a different driver can be installed, so for a fraction of the cost of the entire headphone, it can be completely transformed. I'm always on the lookout for great drivers, I've tried some promising stuff, but for now the Peerless ones tick the most boxes. But then again, who's to tell in a year, two, three a new totally amazing aftermarket driver won't appear, and it will allow owners to upgrade their V3's to achieve new levels of performance. That's my goal for this whole modular design theme, once you have a base headphone, it should allow you to modify it and upgrade it in the future without having to buy an entire new headphone each time you want a slightly different sound signature. It's a way to future-proof a headphone.

 

Would it be possible to see FR graphs of the V3 with different filter plugs installed side by side, I really wonder how the differences in bass between them come through on your measuring setup.

 

Nice, very similar to what I get on my rig.



Was wondering whether I was getting correct readouts, but it seems that was the case, bass adjustment plugs are doing their job as intended since nothing above 200 Hz is being affected when replacing them.

 

Congrats on the end result, really intriguing product! FR shows what a "tame" Beyer should sound like (an ideal beyer in my book), while also looking fantastic aesthetically.

Not strictly related, and it should be obvious for most people, but for anyone using this graph as reference of what the Brainwavz pads might do with actual Beyerdinamic headphones, don't bother. I own a DT880@600 and due to the lack of opinions out there on these pads I tried the velours in my cans trying to subdue the treble while maintaining the rest neutral, intrigued by these measurements. Results are not at all what is shown here. The graph represents the effect over the T1 driver in this DIY housing; on actual beyers it is muddy bass all the way (at least it was for me with the XLs); people over the Beyer thread on head-fi said the differences were small, they must be deaf unfortunately...

 

Yea these graphs aren't useful for Beyerdynamic's (also the T1 drivers aren't used on any of these headphones, all graphs are with Peerless drivers), so it shouldn't be used as a reference for their headphones. DT880 pads are very leaky (more than T1 pads), so when you put on Brainwavz pads onto them instead, it's gonna significantly lift the low end, and because you have no way to increase the transparency of the baffle of the DT880 without permanently damaging the headphone (by tearing off parts of the paper filter cover baffle ports), the DT880 would naturally end up much warmer than it is by default. That's one of the issues of just replacing pads on a headphone and not being able to control sound in other ways too, it's a very hit-and-miss exercise.

My graphs just show how various Brainwavz pads work on V2's, with everything else being identical, but that too can give you wrong impressions because for instance, when using Brainwavz pads, I tune the filter frames differently than when using T1 pads, to be more transparent and compensate for the added warmth by the Brainwavz pads relative to T1 pads. On that previous comparison graph, all measurements were done with filters tuned for the T1 pads, so with Brainwavz pads, there's a bit too much bass on that graph.

But for example, I did build a V2 headphone for someone who specifically needed a headphone as an upgrade for the HD650 used for mixing in a studio, so the FR graph on that ended up like this (with Hybrid pads):



According to them they found them great for mixing in that bass-light (blue graph) setting, the yellow, orange and red are just with bass-heavier filter plugs installed, all graphs are from the same headphone and same pads. Compared to T1 pads, the Hybrid pads basically end up lowering the highs a bit, as you can see the peaks up top are on the same level as the 1000Hz region, whereas with T1 pads, those peaks up top are a few dB above. Or to put it simply, the overall balance goes a bit towards the warm side with Brainwavz pads.

I assume depending on personal preference, for someone who likes a slightly warmer than neutral sound, the V3's would work very nicely with Hybrid pads as well.

 

Measurements squad - I'm really interested in seeing how the physical room change will alter the load at the amplifier.

The LTA headphones might be a nice baseline for people who don't understand how adding physical resistance to the driver adds load to the amplifier. Different amplifiers interactions with that new presented load. The "Synergy" secret sauce at the end of the day.

EDIT: - I saw on page 1 @Marvey is already doing the hard work!!! THANK YOU!

The LTA system looks precise enough that you will be able to really "science" the fudge out of them. Exciting times in DIY @ SBAF.

The ETA Homebrew method may not look as polished either, but everyone starts somewhere and I like that it's all team SBAF working together.

I feel like our community is still influencing evolution vs. a couple other forums that preach a little differently. We have the FOMO forum and the Im Done With Change forum - and us wild misfits that just want to continue experimenting until we die.

If I hadn't lucked out with the LCD-R, I'd totally have an ETA + LTA + ATM + A2A + B2B + LOL fest... just can't afford it right now. 3D printing is getting dope!

 

I guess this explains why I wasn't too bothered by that 8kHz peak either when deciding on whether to go with the T1 earpads (which are as mentioned before the culprit of the peak) or not, they add a bit of sparkle up top but aren't irritating. I was debating whether to go with a pad that measured "better" up top by not having a peak, but I stuck to what subjectively sounded nicer. I guess these pads aren't gonna bother people unless they're really super sensitive to highs, and in that case there are hybrids or leather pads available to reduce it.

 

Panther's 'tail' seems to indicate that notwithstanding his normal tastes, he approves too.

 

Interesting to see the attack and decay measurement on a proper rig, it really does seem fast for a dynamic, wouldn't have expected the decay to be faster than on something like a HE560. I wonder how removing the filter from the driver's magnet would impact these measurements, as adding it definitely subjectively made the sound quicker and tighter compared to leaving the driver as it comes out of the factory.

 

How does one acquire this device? Looks like the business.

 

https://ltsheadphones.weebly.com/shop.html

 

Unfortunately they are a bit too steep for me, but damn do they tick the boxes.