We Have Won !!!
We are lucky enough to have become a winner of the smarta 100. We are a winner in the micro business of the year category which is nice. It means we get to go to a glitsy awards ceremony in London and schmooz with the other winners. Now we need to get some votes in order to stand a chance of wining a prize.
If you have five seconds it would be great if you could vote for us. Just click on this link and hit vote
Here are some more custom headphones for you ;)
And if you would love some custom made headphones like these just click here
Custom Cans Audiophile HD25-1 cable
We have been making the audiophile cable for quite a long time now. They were originally developed with a lot of trial and error and many hours of listening and have got a lot of good feedback about them.
I have finally got some new toys so I can publish some more figures on it’s performance. First of all I will just quickly go through how they are made and why they are constructed the way they are.
The wire we use is made up of 19 x 0.15mm strands of silver plated OFC copper coated in teflon. Using stranded cable keeps them flexible and as they are individually silver plated there is a higher silver content without paying the premium for solid silver. As silver has a lower resistance than copper so most of the signal is carried over the silver plus due to the shin effect the cable offers lower resistance to the very high frequencies where the HD25 start to roll off. The teflon or PTFE is size for size probably the best dielectric to use on thin audio cables as it’s properties stay constant over the audible spectrum it is also quite strong.
We than take 4 strands of that cable and hand braid it and twist it which help it screen out RRI and EMI as well as lowering it’s capacitance, inductance and crosstalk. Well that was the theory… But now we have some figures to show all our efforts worked 😉
The tests below are comparing the audiophile cable with the standard 1.5m sennheiser cable. I know not everyone is a cable believer and the only thing that really matters is how it sounds but is it nice to have a few figures to back it up.
First off the inductance which probably has the least effect on SQ on such a short cable. Inductance is measured in henries which has to be the best name for a measurement I’v herd in a while
As you can see from the pic the sennheiser cable has a measurement of 5.427 microhenries and ours measures just 0.95 microhenries and with all the measurements we are doing lower is better
Next and slightly more important is the capacitance of the cable. Capacitance it the tendency if the cable to store up a charge and can effect timing and impact of the signal and cause something called audio smearing and compresses dynamic range slightly.
Here you can see the standard cable measures 245.3 picoFarads and ours has considerably less at 79.67 picoFarads which again is a nice improvement and mainly due to the braiding
Finally due to the silver plated OFC the cable has a lot less resistance than the standard steel cable. This has several advantages – the first being that less of the signal goes into heating up the cable and more gets to the headphones. This also makes them easier to drive from protable devices which again will help with sound quality and you will get a higher SPL at the same volume setting
As you can see from this pic the standard steel cable has a resistance of 5.5 ohms and our cable is just 0.6 ohms – nearly ten times less
All this combined with high quality connectors gives more detail across the board and a bit of sparkle at the top end
Here are some more custom headphones we made recently
Some awesome glow in the dark iron man styme beyerdynamic DT1350
A rare pair of custom HDJ-500. For some reason pioneer wont sell to us directly so we don’t do many of these
I am loving these UV splatter HD25 we have been making recently
Some nice hawiian style sennheiser hd25-1 mkii
Some custom Sennheiser HD25-1 for eton messy
Here are some nice shimery rockstar silver Beyerdynamic DT100 Studio headphones
Rise of the machine Pioneer HDJ-2000 hand drawn by my own fair hand
Digital cammo custom sennheiser HD25-1 mk ii
Iron man style custom sennheiser HD25-1 mkii
Dismantling the sennheiser HD25 Aluminum
As you may have read previously on this blog … We have been having a play around with the new HD25 Aluminium. They are pretty much identical in construction to the original HD25. With the original HD25 we did a proper dismantling video here
HD25 Dismantling video
Then we did a blindfold dismantling video when we got hold of the adidas ones
Blindfold Adidas HD25 challange
So for the Aluminiums we decided to up the stakes a little
To be honest …. I hope thy don’t release another version or I may have to do it whist wrestling a bear 😉
Enjoy
Here are some of my Favourite Headphones which we have made for people recently
It has been a while since I last did one of these so here are some of the custom headphones we have done since we moved to the new workshop
These M Bison ones may be for sale here
Some more rise of the machine ones – these take so long to do we loose money on every pair but they look the shiznit
New Sennheiser HD25 Aluminium 25th anniversary edition
We have just take delivery of the new HD25 Aluminium. They are an updated version of the standard HD25-1 with a few tweaks o make them feel and sound better. They have the same earcups as the sennheiser amperior so they are machined from a solid block of aluminium which adds more rigidity and a little more mass to the earcups which improves the quality of the bass – a bit like the Uber moded HD25 below. They also have new pads which feel more like real leather and have more memory foam like padding to make them more comfortable and make a better seal. They also come with a nice zip up case to keep them in.
We are one of the first places to have them in stock. You can buy them here
Custom cans shop
They are £209 for plain ones and well worth every penny but we can customise them as well – you are looking at roughly £260 for custom ones
The HD 25 is one of the headphones most requested by live sound engineers and has become an icon of electronic music and a fixture in DJ booths around the world.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the HD 25, Sennheiser has created the new HD 25 ALUMINIUM. Improving on the best, Sennheiser has combined the longstanding sound signature of the HD 25 with a distinctive premium aluminium finish.
Just like the original model, the HD 25 ALUMINIUM is built to satisfy even the most demanding professional. The sound performance offers tightly controlled bass and detailed treble while handling high sound pressure levels. The rotatable capsules are perfect for one-ear monitoring and offer impressive attenuation of background noise, while staying comfortable for long periods of use.
Individually lathed from single blocks of aluminium, the metal earcups give the headphones a unique appearance while taking the clear sound to new heights by further minimizing the resonances in audible range.
And the guaranteed Sennheiser serviceability, robust build quality and features like the tough replaceable steel cable make the HD 25 ALUMINIUM more than a match for even the most intense performances – ready for life on tour.
History
The HD 25s made their commercial debut in in 1988. They were originally developed for outside broadcasting, featuring rotatable capsules that were ideal for one-ear monitoring and offered impressive attenuation of background noise, while staying comfortable for long periods of use.
Soon the HD 25s would establish themselves as THE standard for sound recordings in film, broadcast and television, used by sound engineers for monitoring work.
With growing demand, Sennheiser introduced the HD 25 SP, a more affordable version for professional use with simplified magnets, copper inductor and reduced weight.
From 1989 to 2004 British Airways used the HD 25 BA for passengers on board their Concorde flights. Due to their excellent performance in high-noise environments, they were perfectly suited for passenger use on planes, blocking engine and wind noise with their closed design and secure fit. Music professionals and performers travelling in style took notice. Passengers liked them so much; they occasionally took the headphones with them.
From 2000 the headphones were increasingly seen behind the DJ decks of famous clubs. DJ fans include superstars such as Bob Sinclar, Luciano and QBert.
The Audiophile Uber moded Sennheiser HD25-1 mk II are now officially for sale
As you may or may not know – we have been working on some sonic modifications to the sennheiser HD25-1 for over a year now and I am now pretty sure we have squeezed almost every drop of awesomeness out of them now.
We have been pulling apart and modifying the HD25 for four or five years now and after over a year of tweaking and testing we are now offering the Uber edition for sale to the general public. The HD25 have been around for 25 years now and have won acclaim for their flat response, fun sound and detailed mids. They are great headphones with a brilliant reputation but we always knew they had more to give. These Uber edition ones have several modifications to squeeze more detail across the range and help them drop lower for better resolution in the bass/ sub bass region.
The modifications we have done to these are as follows ..
We have uprated the damping in the earcup to make them sound more open – essentially we have removed the felt disc inside the earcup and instead lined the inside of the cup with bituminous vibration ramping material – this stops resonance in the earcup an helps them sound more open as there is a bit more air volume to play with behind the driver.
We have mass loaded the rear of the driver and the driver enclosure. As you may know every action has an equal and opposite reaction – due to the HD25s lightweight construction a fare amount of the energy from the driver goes into vibrating the earcups. We have added lead weights strategically placed on the driver to add extra weight in the right places to ensure that more of the energy from the diaphragm is turned into sound rather than being absorbed by vibrating the casing. This gives a lot more bass detail and makes them less boomy – you can hear a lot more texture and impact in a basslines. After we had done that ther was probably a bit too much bass so we have also reduced the size of the bass ports in the driver which further tightens things up and stops the bass from overpowering the mids/ highs
Thirdly and probably most importantly we have replaced the steel cable they come with as standard with one of our audiophile cables http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140983727006&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
They come with a steel cable as standard as they are designed for use by camera men and audio pros – the steel gives the cable high tensile strength while keeping it light weight but is not great for sound quality. Some people are not cable believers and personally I would be hard pressed to tell the difference from one copper cable to another but the jump from steel to spc is very noticeable. The steel cable has a resistance of 4ohms and the audiophile cable is not measurable with a standard multimeter – this is because silver has much lower resistance meaning more of the signal from your equipment goes into making sound rather than heat. The cable is also braided by hand and covered in PTFE to protect it from RFI and EMI and has 4 cores – with seperate negative cables for left and right to help a little with crosstalk or we can re-wire them to give a balanced connection for a little extra.
As I said – We have been testing them for quite a while and have been lucky enough to have them reviewed online already – http://www.inearspace.co.uk/inearspace/Custom_Cans_Uber_Modded_Sennhesier_HD-25-1_II.html – the ones we sent for review were airbrushed but the rest of the mods were the same as these.
We were also lucky enough to make a pair for a few top audiophile DJs like Mr Scruff ( our favorate DJ here in the office 😉
Photograph by http://www.raychanphotography.com/
We also had a few pairs we were showing off at the Head-Fi meet in London which wend down so well that we had quite a few people ask to buy a pair as a result which has prompted us to list them on ebay
The headphones will come in plain black apart from the cable which you can have in any colour – Or if you want something very special we can customise the headphones but they will be £40-£70 extra depending on the design
They are already listed on ebay
Or if you want to order a custom pair just fill in the form on the page below
http://www.customcans.co.uk/pages/HD251Info.html
We are now selling Frugal Horn MK3 DIY flat pack full range horn speakers
We have been playing around with full range horn speakers in the office for about a year and just love the “live” sound you get from them an punchy kick drum sounds they deliver. If you have not come across full range horn speakers before they use a horn to take the energy normally wasted at the back of the driver and use it to reproduce the lower notes. This makes them super efficient and you can fill a large room with only a few watts which makes them great for working with valve amps and T amps. They are also single driver design so all the sound comes from a single point rather than the treble coming from one place and the mids and bass coming from somewhere else which makes them sound more realistic and natural. Because they only have one driver they also don’t need or have crossovers which means there is a totally clean signal path from the amp to the driver and nothing in lost in the crossover.
The flat pack kit is designed to be easy to build and is made from the highest grade 18mm birch ply and when built they are really solid
Check out our Shop Page for more details or just message us on facebook if you have any questions
Buy the frugal horn mk3 kit