Headphone transducers.

[5th element]

Im thinking about making a pair of headphones for my brother as my next project. I think that this would be quite an interesting thing to do, although I have a few ideas on how to make them anyway.

I need help on one thing though, where on earth do you get good quality, ie SEAS excel, well maybe not that high, quality in a headphone transducer?

CPC/Farnell have one!, one poxy device in their catalog, these are priced at about £2.50 ea.

Do you guys know of anywhere else that sell them? BTW I live in the UK! so I dont really want to have to import.

I said to him, you buy me the drivers and ill do the rest, so I need help!

cheers Matt

 

[Chris8sirhC]

I'm not really sure i know anything about diy headphones, but if it turns out that you cant really find anything, i would recomend buying grados SR-60, they are only about $50-60 and they sound very very good, esp for the price. These headphones are actually what got me into high quality speakers / diy to begin with. I had never heard anything like them before. Before i heard them i thought 'bose was the best' well.....i was instantly cured of that disease

 

[johnnyx]

re : headphones

I thought about doing this myself, when my daughter broke the headband of some Sony phones I used. They sounded good to me, fairly large transducers with cups that cover the ears better than most. Send me an e-mail and I'll post them to you, I chickened out of the construction myself, but you are welcome to have them to experiment with. I would make them to totally enclose the ear, rather than sit on top. The acoustic impedence of this cavity is different to that of free space, hence the improvement in bass response. I got this far, then I bought some Sennheisers. I don't have the skills or the tools to do a good job.

 

[5th element]

Johnny you have mail!

You got me thinking too, I had never considered the cavity between the ear and the headphone itself, looks like this is gonna be more of a challenge then I originally thought. I can see several prototypes in the pipeline! But enclosed would diffinately suit us better so we dont get as much audible bleed thru from what he's listening to. Enclosed to the head and the room!
Good thing is that making a prototype would not take much time at all really if the way I can see contruction happening works. Well ive got a few ideas that I can try, Ill keep you posted on how it turns out. Although that might be a lil bit of time, im in the process of building one pair of speakers, after which ive got two more planned, i have the drive units, im just awaiting contruction. AND ive got a pair of XLS10's arriving too for me to play around with, oh and a DAC. Looks like the phones will make a nice afternoon project thats will span a few noons oh i almost forgot ive got uni too.

Hmm i just had a thought, open back them and tune the bass response with the cavity between the head and phone. Kinda open baffle style.

Cheers Matt

 

[tool49]

I once blew a Sennheiser transducer from a pair of HD280Pro headphones (bad DC offset). For about $60CAN (about 25£ if I'm not mistaken) I was able to order a new pair. These cans sound great, and they are circumaural, providing nearly 30dB of sound insulation. If I were to build a custom pair of headphones, I'd definitely try and order some of those replacement transducer from a reputable manufacturer such as Sennheiser. Funny thing, the transducers were labelled as coming from Ireland, so I guess you can probably have them even cheaper in England.

Hope this helps,
Sébastien

 

[Hybrid fourdoor]

What about using regular small full range drivers? I mean like a Tang Band 2", at only several hundred milliwatts and couple inches of distance the frequency response would probably be better than normal listening. They could easily fit inside one of those big industrial ear muffs

 

[tool49]

Hehe, that might be a good option if you are trying to make someone def. I think that transducers are way more sensitive to high frequency energy than a speaker. Since they operate really close to the ear, this is appropriate, I don't think a speaker would sound as good so close to the ear canal. The room in the circumaural enveloppe being tiny, it needs very little bass to sound like a thunderous sub is right by you.

Sébastien

 

[fr0st]

You can always try come electrostatic headphones.
Only if you enjoy the thrill of a kV on your ears

http://headwize2.powerpill.org/projects/showproj.php?file=radford1_prj.htm

 

[5th element]

Ok cheers for all your responses, I think Ill try using the Sony ones first off as an experiment, then if that is successful go for something like the sennheisers. Watch this space!