Not sure if anyone else has tried this?..
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I thought most people knew about this… you mean him popping off the plastic ring adapter? Yeah, I mention doing this exact thing on the gen 3 T1… it’s the same process. My first pair of pads actually ripped trying to put the pads on the 1990 with that plastic adapter snapped into place so I ended up removing the plastic piece there, it seriously makes everything so much easier and that plastic piece is definitely not hard to pop off at all then snap back in place. Currently in the process of testing tygr filters on the 990s 600 ohm(I want to see if I can make an elevated Tygr 300r since they are technically the same headphone) as well as the 1990(1990 has the better mids so I want to see what happens).
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anyone have experience with both these and the Neuman NDH 20s? I’ve been wanting a higher end set for mixing and I’m torn between those two.
What are the generally the best dakoni pads for the DT 1990?
Depends? There is no “best” only what you prefer. What kind of sound adjustment are you hoping to get out of it?
I’m mainly looking to tame the their treble an also improving their midrange.
I already watched the video but as someone in the comments pointed out for some reason the DT 1990’s didn’t have their stock pads so I’m inclined to taking the DT 1990 segment with a grain of salt.
In respect to Dekoni’s graph, I’ve seen it before but it confuses because every single graph made by other people show way different results. For example, I’ve seen many graphs showing the velour pads taming the treble waaay more than the Dekoni graph shows. Honestly I’m very confused about all these inconsistencies lol. I do see lots of people recommending the velour pads
to my ear none of them really emphasized the mids, but most the pad swaps if not all of them do decrease the treble by certain increments. If your looking for a mid centric headphone, probably not the 1990s without equalizing it.
Velour are closer to the stock sound for 1990 to my ear
I equalize them according to Oratory’s preset but I lower the bass a little and undo the chances to the mids because he recesses them a bit (except for the 3k bump). Even with the treble town down I still hear the occasional siblance that takes me out of the music, do you think pads could tame it better than what an EQ could do?
for the treble yeah, but just in different increments. Velour will dial them back on the peaks slightly but keep the signature generally so this may be what your looking for if you want a small decrease. Fenestrated are the other one closer to stock but gives it a good decrease to the treble more than the velour
pretty much the only two I can think of right now without sitting down with them that don’t completely alter the signature
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I suspect Dekoni is using Tyll Herten’s old measurements rig but with the artificial ear removed. No matter. The results it presents are necessarily consistent from one ear pad to the next. Any other rig will have a different equivalent to human ear anatomy. Your ears may have a resonance spike at 7.6 kHz and my ears may have the spike at 8.1 kHz, to invent an example. Same with measuring equipment. You would be lucky indeed to identify a rig that approximates your ear canal characteristics above 2 kHz. And luckier still if you can get measurements for all the ear pads, etc., you’re interested in from it.
I can remove the entire 7-8 kHz spike or leave any amount of it in place using EQ. Looks as though Oratory’s bands 7 and 8 are there to remove the 1990’s spike and should do so entirely. One of your own ear resonance may be exacerbating the 1990’s output. In my case I have an ear resonance at 4 kHz that shows up consistently on every headphone I own.
If you have multiple headphones, use the Online Tone Generator or a sine wave sweep to see if you have one or more such spikes of your own in the high frequencies that show up across multiple headphones. If you do and it overlaps with the 1990’s spike, it may well be too much for any amount of EQ to take out. Certainly ear pads wouldn’t serve, except perhaps in conjunction with EQ.
I see, thank you I’ll take a look at those pads.
That’s an interesting point, I’ll make sure to look into that
I did the test but how can I tell if I have a spike? Will I hear a certain frequency louder than the others?
Sorry, should have made that clear.
Yes: if you’re moving gradually from lower to higher frequencies or vice versa and the sound suddenly gets louder for a relatively short range of frequencies, that’s what we’re talking about. You may also hear the sound get quieter in a particular area, that’s a dip in loudness. Either way, if the spike or dip is consistently in the same frequency range across multiple headphones, it’s very likely your hearing that’s causing it. An example of a range of frequencies might be 6350 to 7100 Hz. We’re not talking about just one or two frequency numbers.
BTW, you don’t need to be listening at any particular loudness level. Just a comfortable conversational loudness will do nicely.
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Ran a test that shocked the hell out of me this morning. At work so gotta give that another listen later. I put some suede and tygr foam on the 1990. I swear it sounded closer to dark I may be losing it lol. Some kinda placebo or grogginess from waking up.
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It’s getting interesting! 
Sat back down with it, now that I am awake… it definitely dialed back that treble by a big margin(like ridiculous levels) but I am not sure if it sounds all that good honestly. Bass takes a big jump forward but it may be pushing the treble back too much as I do believe this is quite a bit veiled. I will test it a bit further later, perhaps with something other than suede. I suppose you could cut out the extra foam off the dekoni pads in this case but I am not about to do that to test this. This definitely completely kills that brightness though. Going to test the stock pads like this later on. Will place an edit on this later when I have a little more time to tinker
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Yeah so I do have some high mids/treble peaks (5900 - 7050, 9500-11050, 13000 - 14000, etc). That explains a lot actually because I would often show examples of siblance in songs to my brother and he would never hear it. Anyway, I went ballistic with my eq and made the whole range from 9000 - 17000 flat and dialed them back like 6db and siblance is nowhere to be seen so far but of course my 1990’s are nowhere near as open sounding or airy as before and also imagining is probably considerably worse now. So I guess I’m going to have to learn how to EQ properly to give some life back to my 1990’s,
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