Yup, sadly.
On the subject of T50RPs, man, planars are hell of a drug. Lol.
Yup, sadly.
On the subject of T50RPs, man, planars are hell of a drug. Lol.
Whatâs your next planar going to be?? You gotta fuel your addiction somehow
I donât like kraft dinner enough to buy planars every two weeks, lol.
Dat planar bass/kick slam though, re-discovering old electronic music songs and holy shiiiiiiii- I think I donât need coffee anymore.
Theyâre so effing dangerous for me though. I donât know what does this and why, but, I cranked them to test my amps and I realized my âpain thresholdâ is like⊠20dB higher with T50RPs than with my other headphones. Strange thing. But yeah, my amp needs to be at 50%-ish. Higher than that and itâs dangerous. Fun, but dangerous. Avoid.
They drink that power up and do magical things with it. With an insane amount of mods, you can get an insane amount of bass extension. Like sub bass appears in songs that you didnât know existed.
Iâm deep into the Open Alpha mod. Modified drivers, wave guides ect. I have two pairs of MK3âs that are just over the top and voiced very differently. One is a bass extension machine that is super fun to listen to. Clear but forgiving and fun without fatigue. The other is a microscope that draws a very defined line in the sand between good mixes and garbage recordings. Both of them take a lot of power to drive because they both have a lot of dampening to shape them into what they are.
The sound pressure on these cans with the volume knob on 9 is similar to my HD58Xâs on 5. So just hard to drive really. One side effect of this hard to drive situation is that a lot of amps go up in THD with volume. I have a Valhalla 2 and when I want that tube sound I crank it, then use the preamp outs to a Magni 3 on high gain that can drive them much better and it sounds great. I have a FIIO e18k that struggles to drive them and when you crank it to 10, trying to drive these cans it just falls flat on its face. I canât quite describe it, but it is almost like the louder bits are being flattened off because there is no headroom.
This gives you impressive detail, though (with stock T50RPs anyway). They just canât âboxâ your ears with that planar kick slam, etc.
The little manual that came with it says âresistance to high level input peaks of up to 3000mWâ, so, there you go, lol. Three watts!
I wrote, and re-wrote, and changed pads, and bent the headband, and un-bent the headband, and hereâs my review, finally.
Fostex T50RP MK3 Review (with Shure 840 pads): Hard hitting, cold precision.
First: Way too much treble, stock. Shure 840 pads are mandatory if you want to hear bass/drum kicks, etc.
Theyâre my first planars. What are planars? With planars, letâs say the music hits, hard. And fast. And stops fast too. And not only the bass hits. Everything hits. The snares, the cymbals, etc. You know, when you listen to, letâs say, an uplifting 140bpm trance song, and then after a bit of silence, thereâs the kick and you go âoof!â Well, prepare to clearly hear the silence (yes), and then go âoofâ 140 times per minute with T50RPs. Lol. Fun stuff for cranks, haha. If you wanted to sit back and relax with scotch on the rocks and T50RPs, nope: You will be dancing on the carpet after 2 minutes. If you press play, thatâs because you want to feel all the energy that was in the studio. And theyâre really analytic. So smooth jazz will be as relaxing as being there⊠lying right next to the drummer and the saxophonist. Because planars are relentless, and T50RPs can be really, really dynamic.
-Bass (again, with Shure 840 pads): Iâve never heard this much precise, strong and accurate bass and sub-bass. I already talked about the kicks/drum kicks, too. Skull shaking stuff. I even got nausea one evening after listening to electronic music at high volume. Just once, but still. Iâve listened to electronic music with HD280 Pros (they allegedly go to down to 7hz) for years, and never experienced this. Some people have the same problem with subwoofers, apparently. Well, it makes sense. T50RPs planar technology hits hard, and goes low. I mean, you can even hear the bass in Metallica - And Justice for All!
-Mids: Theyâre neutral, but they seem a bit V-shaped. Thatâs because the âhigh-midsâ are all there, but⊠not often. Maybe T50RPs are just âtoo dynamicâ : Thereâs obviously no drum kicks, bass, snares or cymbals in the high-mids. But with violin strings, or when a girl screams, itâs glorious (uh, yeah, Iâm still talking about music, guysâŠ).
-Highs: They donât extend all the way up to 20khz, but, huh, thereâs not much there to hear, obviously. They sound really clear, because they have treble but lack âhigh-midsâ. So, what the hell are âhigh-midsâ, you say? Well, Iâll be more precise, I found a graph at Changstar: Just look at this hole from 2khz to 5khz (see below) compared to HD600s. I donât have HD600s, but everytime I try to convince myself T50RPs are neutral all the way, I plug my HD58Xs and realize thereâs something missing. This lack of âhigh-midsâ can make 'em sound thin, or âcoldâ, especially combined with the precision of planar technology.
Oh, and ignore the -5dB @ 20hz: Itâs definitely fixed with Shure 840 pads.
The precision of planar technology.
I probably shouldnât confound âthinnessâ and âprecisionâ, but Iâll say that anyway: these planars can sound âthinâ. T50RPs are the exact opposite of my HD58Xs, in which everything sounds âfullerâ and âwarmerâ. And with overdubbed, compressed songs destroyed by the âloudness warâ, they can even sound like youâre listening to exploded speakers. Yup, thatâs what compression sounds like. And, in my opinion, thatâs all what T50RPs are meant to be. Itâs just âthe price to payâ for precision. As I already said here, I got 5/6 on this test (.mp3 320kbs vs .wav files). Everything is there. Everything is detailed. Everything jumps at you. You just donât hear âreverbâ or âsoundstageâ when there isnât.
So, no graph could have predicted that, not even CSD graphs, but I now have two âcomplementaryâ but neutral(-ish), studio-ready headphones. Between T50RPs and HD58X, I was just expecting âmore of the sameâ. Boy I was wrong. I really can hear this planar technology. Iâm really lucky!
And now, with a smartphone:
âToo dynamicâ doesnât sound fun for some, but I only said they can be âtoo dynamicâ. Yup, T50RPs can sound thin, even mechanical⊠Try giving these LESS power (!). With lower power, like with a smartphone, T50RPs suddenly become smooth, low-volume critical listening beasts! Detailed, analytical. Way less dynamics, exchanged for way more detail. Behold T50RP, the Japanese mech engineered to devastate all your bad studio mixes⊠with your damn smartphone.
I donât have a 1 watt yeet cannon (copyright Zeos), so I donât know if theyâd be the same with a lot of power. All I know is, my jaw dropped when I heard a ton of unheard details and hiss, with what most â well, especially Zeos, would call ânot enoughâ power.
P.S.: No âplanar crinkleâ even with beard and long hair. I still donât know what âplanar crinkleâ is (theyâre a tiny bit âopen-backâ, though, and I heard it was something about pressure â not a problem here).
Nice review
The driver is fairly small compared to other planars and there is some venting, so that shouldnât be an issue
Also just get a basx a100 already lol
Headphone output of my AVR is 200 mV/47 kΩ. I donât know what it means in mW?
But thatâs enough for me⊠otherwise Iâll go deaf fast, lol.
Feeding the fostex more power doesnât only give more volume
Well, giving these less power gave me more discernible detail so I donât know what to think about 1 watt yeet cannons.
One day, one day.
So you do like more treble lol. Under powering them makes them a bit more lean and compressed imo
Definitely not haha (except for speakers, maybe! I have Fluance SX6s).
Anyway, yeah, Iâm already searching for solutions.
Also, what does âcompressedâ means? Lacking dynamics?
The dynamics are kind of squished (in this way I am using it). It reduces the dynamic range, and makes quieter sounds easier to hear and louder sounds quieter, and reduces the gaps between the quieter and louder sounds. This can make it easier to hear detail, but less natural sounding with a strange sound imo. There are more naturally compressed sounding headphones like the mrspeakers aeon and ether, but some like that sound and some donât
Nice, thanks. âCompressedâ for me only made me think about compressed mp3s. Different compression, heh.
Today I learned: Most people agree, Schiit stuff sounds constipated.
sorry.
Was that part of their business plan??? Thats a really good way to put it lol
Hahaha
Sorry Schiit users lol. The joke was just too easy.
Maybe I can explain better than others. Compression is taking the loud stuff and making is less volume. That allows for more volume so you push the quieter stuff closer to the highest volume relative to the squashed louder stuff. Definitely watch a youtube video about it, its probably too vague without images.
Edit:
My audio engineering degree, gotta flex you know!
It also depends on what you are talking about regarding compression, as compression is different in the sense of what you are talking about, like dynamic range compression, audio file compression, gain compression, power compression, etc
also have some audio engineering training too lol
I got my t50rp mk3 in mid June and they sound terrible, and what I heard from metal571 and others, I might sell them. I canât stand the distortion, I donât listen to them at all with Shure 840 or alcantara pads. Iâm thinking of selling them, and not taking them to modhouse to be converted to argons.