Coming up… (Patreon)

Just got this, also the HDB630 finally arrived and let me spoil it for you. They are both not really great let alone for the 500€ Sennheiser is asking. With all the hype around the HDB630 I was actually surprised how bad this one sounds, still better than most others including the Sony and AirPods Max not even talking about the B&W crap but very boomy with default „neutral“ setting and mids sound quite colored while the EQ cannot quite fix it. The PEQs are limited to a Q factor from 0.25 to 8, so very broad adjustments to reduce the entire bass is hardly possible just like you cannot reduce narrow peaks. It can be improved a bit with the EQ but it will never really sound great. If this is „the best“ out there right now, I am pretty relaxed now because I was quite concerned about how the HDB630 would actually perform with many calling it some „game changer“ but in reality it’s nothing that special.

I am still busy with preparing everything for the campaign, and recently I did lots of tweaking to the sound of the NH1n as I was not 100% satisfied, I listened every day and had setup my KH80 permanently in my office room, which became the basis for the current studio mode. I finished some recordings of the KH80 in both my office room and living room that became the basis for studio and living room mode now. So these 2 modes will basically represent 2 different rooms, and how they interact with neutral speakers, while the other 2 modes are only boosted variants of this. Instead of adding just some bass shelf to studio to achieve the living room setting, I now created both by trying to reproduce the perceived speaker spectrum playing within the given room as close as possible with the heaphone. Studio should sound more intimate with neutral bass, just how you would get in a well treated studio setup, while living room has the usual bass boost you get in larger rooms. I still need to rearrange the filters properly until I can start with the other 2 modes. I will try to keep the boosts similar to what I had before but it may need some slight readjustment and I will use the HDB630, the AirPods Max and the XM6 as guide how to not tune bass 😁.

I am quite tired as I haven’t slept a lot the last days but I need to finish everything until I can start the preorders. Maybe I can shoot some short update at night demonstrating the new studio and living room mode. And I would also like to shoot some quick video with the HDB630 but most should become obvious from my comparisons I am preparing for the campaign now.

I have the following headphones now and will use these for comparison against the NH1n:

For studio mode I selected the HD600, HD560, HD800S and the NDH30 as they have a rather neutral bass, HDB630, Valco VMK25 will be used for living room and AirPods Max, XM6 and DT770/80 for boombox mode.

I don’t want to add any other headphones right now as these should represent the most common and popular choices I guess. Later I can prepare further comparisons if needed.

Also thinking of starting an audio database for all headphones I will manage to capture, this will be accessible to the enthusiast level and will demonstrate the headphone playing against speakers with several songs. I may need to adjust my compensation to allow for an even more realistic headphone sound before starting this, my priorities are definitely to finish everything else in order to start the campaign, then I can concentrate on other things. But with my setup I can basically visit some audio stores pretend to be listening to some headphones while in reality I will record my database playlist with them. This way I don’t even need to purchase the headphones but can capture them directly from within the store including some basic measurement done with pink noise.

I also have a contact in China who can help me with getting some OEM IEM or portable speaker that I could start working on next in case this here becomes successful. Then Joy&Oluv‘Sone can maybe get some further attention…

I am still thankful to everyone who joined me though this journey when I started Patreon some years back and I am still dependent on your support right now but maybe soon it won’t be necessary to continue with Patreon. Thanks to everyone and hopefully we can make this happen together. I am not sure how long I can still do all this audio stuff and it it makes any sense at all.