That’s odd. I would email E-MU about that.
Nice! How do you like them so far?
I love them they look very beautiful and sound amazing. To me they sound pretty much the same as my Tr-X00. As of right now I can’t really tell the difference between the two. I probably like the Emu better, but it’s probably because it’s more of a mental brand new headphone situation. I got these brand new and I bought the Tr-X00 used. So the headphones feel like “Mine” and special. Which I guess can be a dumb thing to some. And coming from across the world from a company and Chan that cares alot about his product. When I was having problems with my ebony cups Chan called me personally and talked to me about my situation. So I can respect someone like that.
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I remember i had a pair of th900 that had one missing screw on the right earcup. My emu teaks have all their screws.
I’m very pleased.
Initial impressions (after basically wearing the Sundara all day):
- smaller than I expected.
- wow, light.
- pretty.
- pad shape less annoying than I expected.
- (edit) it does annoy me, but I think I may be able to get used to it.
- dat bass.
Running balanced through the XD05 BAL using Hart Cables.
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That’s a nice looking set. Congratz!
Be careful - that biodynamic bass and overall sound can be addicting… Not that I have 3 Fostex and a Denon or anything, lol
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Darn it’s better than I expected.
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I have a fostex th900 mkii
I see the potential and actually like it, but I don’t yet love it.
At first I was good with it, getting used to the sound. Noticed it was a bit sharp depending on genre. And after a few days really developed hearing fatigue where my ears are very sensitive and I really need them to rest. I didn’t play crazy volumes.
Will pad roll, see what it does with dekoni sheepskin. That lowers the treble I’ve read.
Now I was wondering about the lawton mod.
Would it tame treble more and a type 1 or 2 cup, would that give me deep nice bass. Marginally or significant differences? Worth it?
I’d like the highs to be tamed if I want it to be my daily driver. And I also want deeep baassss
Yes, of course, the Th 900 is in a completely different league.
The Th 610 and all the others have a different driver in them for the time being.
And they are also smoother, which is certainly better for your applications.
The Th900 dissolves everything and takes everything apart.
What you hear when gaming is simply poorly compiled audio content.
The Th900 is not made for that.
Use it instead for listening to music, which is what it was designed for.
I don’t think a Lawton cup will improve that.
With the dimming kit you could reduce the highs a bit.
A Denon Ah d5200 or something along those lines might be more fun.
Maybe add the Beyerdynamic Dt 770 for gaming if you can handle the Beyerpeak.
Or look in the gaming area here in the forum for headphones that cover the gaming area. There are quite a few that have proven themselves.
And it might even be better than investing in the Lawton mod. If you like the Th900 as it is for listening to music.
Looking at it from a purely objective point of view.
Before anything else, maybe try ZMF Eikon hybrid pads. I don’t have the TH-900 and haven’t tested this as thoroughly as I would like yet, but so far they seem to tame the treble on my Lawton modded X00s.
If you enjoy your TH-900 other than the treble sometimes, and I mean REALLY enjoy them, then the Lawton mod will only make them better.
The type 1 or 2 woods should help the treble, but Mark Lawton would be able to help you much better than me (and he would be happy to).
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Out of curiosity, what source (Amp/DAC) are you using with the mk2?
I haven’t found the treble to be excessive with either my th900mk2 (pearl white) or th909 - at least it has never made me wince nor have I experienced any fatigue. I will admit with some of my poorly recorded tracks these are not the best phones…
You can experiment with rolling pads - but often that can change something else in the signature. I have not rolled pads on the 9xx’s , but others have expressed good results by using th610 pads on the the th900 to smooth out the treble without hurting the bass/lower mids.
I do not think you should be investing in a Lawton mod just to “see” if it can help. That is an expensive experiment. If you were looking that direction, you could just start with the driver tune-up and maybe the Lawton pads.
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Yeah, Don’t get me wrong, I like this headphone and biggest reason is listening to music. I’ll be living abroad for a year next year anyways and won’t be able to game at all, so that’s no priority.
I’m not interested in owning multiple headphones, I want to own one good one and one good IEM, which I have found.
I Hope I can make this one my daily driver because it does a lot of things good when listening to music.
I will try pads firstly, need a new cable, because stock is really non practical and then decide. But the tune up kit sounds interesting as mark says it cleans up the treble response making it more accurate and less fatiguing. That and new pads should make for less fatiguing treble. Mark also claims deeper bass from his cups.
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I’ve read a lot of people having succes with dekoni sheep skin. More than anything else when I did some research. So I ordered some over priced pads. Waiting for them to arrive and test. The zmf pads do look very comfortable if I look them up.
I do enjoy the th900. It’s pretty close to what I want. Bass, subbass, clear highs. But the highs are just a tad too much and my ears get tired. If we could make it a little more layed back and smooth that would be great. I do have tinnitus (long time already) and those highs don’t do good to it over a longer time listening to the phone. The lawton mod, I’d do it if I knew it would help my cause and make a better phone for me. If you read about it online, a lot of people say it’s very marginal , the difference in sound. They use a lot of maybes. Maybe a little better separation, maybe little this or that. So I was wondering in this thread if people had lawton mods and how much of a change there actually is. Of course you don’t want to lose the character of the headphone completely. I like it. But reading about it, hasn’t really answered my question of what the difference in the highs will be. Maybe a little better or better. Mark seems to think it’ll be better but yeah,… I asked him if you can explain the difference in decibels, if it’s really measurable or rather marginal. But he didn’t answer me. He said it would help.
This journey into sound has already been one big experiment. It’s hard to audition a lot of stuff, specially now. luckily there’s a big aftermarket going, and threads like buy/sell/looking for made me easily get rid of my gl2000 goldplanar for example. So you know, might be able to get rid of this one should it not work out. However, I’d like this one to be my main headphone for a while if we can just change it up a little bit.
Will change pads and cable for sure. Now I’m running single ended, stock cable into my fiio q5s type c. I’m getting a cable from forza audio works to a 4,4 mm pentacon so I can use the fiio to it’s best capabilities. I read pads do a lot, so I’m anxiously waiting for my dekoni pads and will see after that.
I tried the dethonray honey h1 as well as the ifi signature. With goldplanar gl2000, fostex th900 and hyla sarda IEM. Every time for me the q5s came out the clear winner. Sarda shines on it, beautiful sound. Very deep bass, super crisp and very clear but never painful highs. Music is beautiful. Honey and ifi signature made the th900 just flat and painful. Q5s type c is de most warm sounding of them all. This one get’s the bass out, and tames the highs already considerably compared to the honey and signature. I need portable, My office is not the same day by day and I’m moving abroad and want to take one killer pair of over ear headphones and one killer pair of IEM’s. That’s why I even consider the lawton mod. I only need one pair of good phones and I’m happy. Also I won’t be ordering or buying audio gear when living abroad. So I’m on the hunt now.
I quite liked the Dekoni X00 sheepskin pads, So I hope their TH-900 pads work for you. If not, then I would try the Eikon pads (I intend to tests these pads over the next few days, so I’ll hopefully have a more definitive answer soon).
As for the Lawton mod, it is not really matter of “maybe changes”. I can only speak for the type 4 chambers I got for the X00s, but is was a fairly noticeable improvement. The bass is much better in both quantity and quality. The mids are clearer and fairly forward, especially for such a V-shaped headphone. The treble is not any less, but it’s smoother and cleaner, only sounding as harsh as the music you play. The soundstage got a bit wider and quite a bit deeper. Like I said, there is no “maybe” in what the Lawton chambers can do. The tune-up on the other hand is rather subtle, but still worth it imo.
@Hilton got a few different chambers and compared them all, so he might be able to tell you what you need about the highs with type 1 or 2 chambers specifically. He modded a TH-610, but the sound changes should transfer over to the TH-900.
Thanks for your insight!
The way you describe lawton mod, is definitely appealing. Also would be curious about the eikon pads, so would be good to hear about those 
Maybe one more thing, what are your thoughts on lawton’s angled pads vs dekoni sheepskin?
The Lawton pads are very nice, but they are probably not what you’re looking for. I’ve only had the pleasure of trying them on the X00s but they are less bassy and a bit brighter than most of the other pads I’ve tried. I actually really like them since they make my X00s sound more “neutral” for lack of a better word, but I still prefer other pads overall.
I don’t know if the TH-900 will react in the same way since they come with fairly large ear-holed round pads but I doubt the Lawton pads will reduce the treble like you want regardless.
I can’t compare to the Dekoni TH-900 sheepskin pads since I have the ones specifically for the Massdrop X00 line.
If you did get the X00 style by chance, then I think the Dekoni sheepskin pads are probably going to be better for you since I found they had a warmer sound with slightly reduced treble. I’ve also heard that the X00S/610 style pads help to reduce the treble on the TH-900 so that might also apply to the Dekoni ones.
The main issue with the Dekoni X00 sheepskin pads is they didn’t work well with the Lawton chambers. I theorize this is because there is more air behind the driver, so the relatively small air space on the ear side becomes restrictive to the driver now that the air space behind the driver is no longer an restricted. I find the larger ear-holed pads like the ZMF offerings work best with the Lawton chambers.
I’ll start testing the Eikon hybrid and Ori cowhide pads tomorrow if I can. So hopefully I can let you know how they perform in a few days.
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Servus,
Yes, I understand that absolutely.
The audio in the gaming area is when you do not exactly soas of bad that then such a headphone like the Th900 dissects something completely.
That’s all I meant.
Therefore, the idea was to go to something where less dissected to stand there still on the pleasure side.
But everyone like he wants.
The Lawton mod:
I had the Tr x00 Mahogany at the time and it was terrible.
Vorallem in the heights quite pointed.
The mod has made the whole thing much more pleasant and a good deal defused.
The 50-60$ are perfectly fine and worthwhile.
With the pads, everything is a matter of taste quite honestly.
Just as with the Lawton cups.
Go to the cups after Towel and talk to Mark openly about it is the best.