Brainwavz HM5 Velour Pads on The V6

Here’s to a little impulse buy over the weekend that involved a pair of HM5 velour pads. I went on Amazon in search of decent, comfortable pads for my V6 considering how often I had been wearing them. Brainwavz seems to be among the few familiar names in audiophile-grade audio who’ve managed to build a good distribution channel for themselves here in India. Amazon India exclusively caters to their products, so much so that you are taken right to a whole inventory of Brainwavz’s many offerings when queried for ‘headphone replacement pads’.

Velours, unlike pleather, are porous by nature. After all, they are a kind of fabric material that are made into headphone pads by being wrapped around a foam cutout. Their main distinguishing factor is how they let air through the pads. Now how would this play into its sonic qualities? The lack of an air-tight seal around the ears allows much of the sound to escape. This keeps the low frequencies from building up. This equally keeps all frequencies from interfering constructively or destructively inside the headphone which amounts to a more honest sound signature.

When paired with the good old MDR-V6, the low end definitely suffers but not at the expense of articulation – this distinction is very important to make early on. A boomy and impactful bass doesn’t necessarily equate to better bass, at least in a purist’s dictionary. A good bass in my definition is striking that balance between good articulation with impact. A bass with all boom and no definition is just bad! The V6 had a bit of a boomy low end before the velours, especially after breaking into these headphones. The mid-range was predictably affected, especially on the lower end. It was becoming clear that these headphones were benefiting from the shallow earpads that allowed a good deal of low end to buildup inside – resulting in that powerful rumble and impact the V6 is sometimes lauded for. The bass lost its impact and boom following the upgrade (‘up’grade – really?).

The upper mids and treble stood largely unaffected. Like I had just mentioned, these frequencies don’t get thrown under the bus with a change of earpads. They also carry a lot more information – so you may just as well save your worries about losing clarity and articulation with an upgrade. Even if there is going to be a change, and there almost certainly will be according to Murphy’s law, the differences shouldn’t be nearly as bad in relation to the lower end. The treble sounded way less compressed with the new pads. The hats could now be heard at a distance. Instrument separation generally showed improvement. This all isn’t to say the HM5 velours augmented every aspect of treble reproduction. It felt like the mid- to high- treble gained emphasis. This made things snappier and fun, but not any more analytical than the stock pad’s offering.

Who is going to benefit from velours? Jazzheads and connoisseurs of classical music that require a great deal of articulation and sound stage. Nothing sounds compressed. The fact that velours provide lower acoustic resistance with the outside world helps with this, not to mention how it allows for greater sound staging and precision with which sound may be reproduction. This, however, is offered by velours at the expense of bass and some lower mid-range presence. Why these frequencies in particular you may ask? Wavelengths matter! The lower frequencies have a greater wavelength making them more susceptible to interference. This is perhaps why a pleather solution or just about any pad that offers a better seal against the skin has more to offer in the bass department.

Who may benefit from more traditional pads made of pleather, sheepskin or leather? The bassheads who don’t care too much for faithful sound reproduction. This isn’t to say that all headphones that employ pleather solutions have good bass response, but just that this tends to be the overarching trend. A practical advantage over the velour pads is improved isolation. But this comes at the penalty of what can be described as claustrophobic or compressed sound that doesn’t always give that immersive listening experience velours may provide.

Postscript: Do headphones really break in and what are my experiences with it?

While there is some empirical and anecdotal evidence to support headphone break-in, the case is largely dismissed as a break-in of the headphone’s earpads and supporting components itself and not the driver. There’s also a psychological basis for break-in as the brain, as this plastic organ it is, is supposed to learn and adapt to your new pair over due course of time, continually adjusting to its sonic characteristics. This seems entirely plausible making the whole prospect of changing headphones an unsettling one.

While I lack the tools (and methods) of headphone measurement at my disposal, the best evidence I can provide for break-in is anecdotal i.e. from that of personal experience. Even after several rounds of subjecting my V6 to pink noise at fairly loud volumes, I didn’t find any stark improvement to the headphone’s problematic treble performance. The only thing that did bring about better low end boom and mid range, I guess, was use – plain and simple. The earpads deformed with use and perhaps contributed to the better seal – and resulted in me cutting my hair short!

Update(02/08/2019): I was able to exchange my HM5 pads for the more suited perforated pleather pads, also an offering from Brainwavz specifically tailor-made for Sony models similar to the MDR-V6. Right away, it was evident how these brought the mid-range forward. There was a bass dip around 200 Hz, known to exist with this headphone with the stock pads on but I didn’t A/B it so I cannot tell for sure if the new pads exaggerated the upper bass dip. The sub-bass seemed to improve and seemed to make things a lot more unrefined and boomier. The bass seemed to loose its definition. The V6/7506’s notorious 3 kHz treble peak seemed to calm down a tad, noticeable nonetheless. The upper treble gained a bit, I guess and made things a lot more snappier or if you’d like me to be honest, outrightly sibilant. I got around to performing some tentative EQ cuts on APO 1.2 and managed a lush, neutral and musical sound with the V6. Who would’ve thought, right?

Sound aside, the soundstage improved drastically in contrast to the V6’s original compressed, in-you-face kind of sound. Dynamics also benefited from a nice sense of depth. With the EQ applied, whose settings are screenshotted above, the V6 was able to reproduce drums with much better localization. The snare drum in some jazz records sounded very real. But it felt like everything was emanating from behind my head – just an observation that might be helpful to some. The earpads have a generous layer of felt to tame the driver, so guaranteed that the treble won’t be getting any worse than the stock pads. One thing that could be a deal-breaker for some is their rather small size. I have a below-average ear size so it fit nice and snug over my ears with literally no room to spare. Some other big-eared creatures might effectively convert their V6 into an over-ear headphone with this mod – so beware!

I can’t speak much for decay rates but I did notice some slight improvement in instrument separation. But again, I don’t know if it was the soundstage. However there was also some degradation in the sub-bass area where a lot of boom kept sustaining in the background almost completely masking the mid to upper bass where all the action usually takes place.

Best Headphones Under $100 (For Reference)

My latest hyperfixation has been exploring the world of entry-level audiophile headphones. It all began when I needed a good set of reference phones for my music production hobby. After some deliberation, I called dibbs on the Sony MDR-V6 which seemed to have built itself a reputation on Head-Fi and r/musicproduction as indestructible, both metaphorically and literally. But it wasn’t long until the V6’s annoying quirks began to surface making some records an almost painful listen. They were treble heavy. Not to mention they had not a smooth kind of treble but one with a rough, metallic texture. This made certain consonants on vocal tracks almost piercing – this was a given with the genre of music I frequent.

Trance features soprano vocals which seems to wander right into this troublesome area for the V6. Jazz proved to be much more of a nightmare, with certain notes on the saxophone coming close to shattering my eardrums. A harsh treble response wasn’t the only thing keeping me from unconditionally loving these phones, as it turns out, folks on the Internet were right about the MDR-V6/7506 displaying a sort of grainy presentation across much of the upper mids and treble. This sound characteristic was overpowering on records with dense and many layered sounds. Complaints aside, the V6 was my point of entry into reference-grade audio and it lived up to its reputation as a studio monitor/tracking headphone. The treble-heavy response proved revealing bringing out the attack of many track elements without drowning them in the mix, something the Sennheisers have been known to do with their relaxed presentation. In all, my contention is that these headphones fare well with simplistic genres where there aren’t elements spread over a broad range of frequencies like say, trance arpeggios or perhaps a frenzied saxophone solo hitting all the exciting notes.

I was presented broadly speaking with two buying strategies for my new headphones. I either resort to an utilitarian mindset, choosing something that would help make up for the V6’s short-comings so to maximize the utility of both products combined. This would make sense considering how the V6 might become useless had I found something surpassing it in every regard. The other option would be completely disregarding my existing purchase by choosing one with the most neutral frequency response, among other characteristics to suit my practical needs. In the end, the utilitarian route seemed the most promising (and safest), again from an utilitarian angle. Let’s look at it this way – I was driven to buy the V6 in the first place in hopes of finding a neutral and flat sound signature in it that would have proven ideal for mixing. Now obviously, I didn’t find quite what I wanted with this purchase. A risk-benefit analysis at this time makes it clear how I would run the risk of ending up with yet another unsatisfactory pair – regardless of my deliberative research into the product beforehand. Considering that I’d shelled out less than $50 for these phones including shipping on eBay, it didn’t seem like too much of a waste if I had to spend that money all over again to complement my existing purchase, only this time with first-hand knowledge about the V6’s performance.

In the sub-$100 reference sound category, we shall keep our quest to the realms of dynamic or moving coil drivers. Their economics of scale thanks to overwhelming popularity in both consumer and professional markets has made them an affordable option for many casual and critical listeners without penalizing on sound quality. We shall also be exploring open-backs for their more analytical and controlled sound.

I now present to you, our contenders for best headphones retailing at or under $100 (open-back models are italicized):

1. Sennheiser HD280 Pro
2. Sennheiser HD559
3. Sony MDR-V6
4. Sony MDR-7506
5. Grado SR60e
6. AKG K-240 Studio
7. Audio-Technica AD-700X
8. Audio-Technica ATH-M40X
9. Philips SHP9500
10. Shure SRH440

Sennheiser HD1 Free: Yet Another ‘V-shaped’ Earphone Targeted At Audiophiles

This is going to be a quick and honest review of the Sennheiser HD1 Free in-ear Bluetooth earphones – from a critical listener’s perspective. There is no shortage of fun, basshead headphones on the consumer market. So much that many companies have adopted the infamous v-shaped EQ scheme as their go-to marketing technique to sell big. For connoisseurs of high-fidelity audio like myself, this is an upsetting state of affair.

Arguments for the v-shape can be provided on many fronts – including evolutionary psychology. I think over the course of human evolution, our neural circuits responsible for deciphering and making sense of auditory stimuli have grown accustomed to hearing subdued treble in its environment. This is because high frequencies are attenuated easily in the dense atmosphere we live in, allowing the lower bass frequencies to travel further to reach our ears. Ever experienced waiting outside a venue where you could make out nothing but the thump and rumble? Our brains today still expect attenuated treble frequencies from our state-of-the-art sound sources that have been fixated on spectral flatness. Headphone makers with a leaning toward psychoacoustics over analytic reproduction of sound (cue Sennheiser and Bose) have grown to embrace a veiled sound signature – easily accomplished by holding up a napkin or towel against your ear. While most high-end Sennheisers track HTRC through the bass and mid-range, they start rolling off with HTRC at the treble giving way to a palatable sound signature.

Perhaps one of the reasons why I tend to shy away from in-ear phones comes down to the variability in their perceived sound quality. Sound delivery seems to be extremely fit-dependent – so generally the harder you push your buds into your ear canal, the stronger your bass will be. Conversely, the looser the fit, the more pronounced your treble will seem giving that tinny sound in-ear buds have become known for.

The deal breaker for me?