yeah i heard Zeos say so
For the fostex the woods change the sound as that’s how they were designed, for some headphones it’s more aesthetics
The mids and highs are similar on the curves, but if the bass booms that much more on the purpleheart wouldn’t all manufacturers/bass heads look for that wood? I have a hard time believing that it’s not some additional tuning
I am a little worried cause ZMF does these usually in Sapele. If i get the Bulbinga how is that gonna change the sound? I want to buy these cause of all the excitement they have caused over their sound.
But logically since the Bulbinga is more dense it should sound better right? The Bulbinga also come with a brass grill which looks awesome. the Bulbinga wood looks better than the Sapele also with a lighter wood and more contrast. I really like the look of these, only 200$ more.
I have tried some different Lawton wooden cups and it changes the sound. The wood does matter if you design it to. I have gone through some different wooden cups with my th900mk2 and each wood has different sonic properties
I don’t think it makes the difference with ZMF that it does with Fostex. He tunes the Aeolus to sound like an Aeolus. From the ZMF page on wood:
The density of wood will determine the ultimate perceived “speed” of your headphone. ZMF headphones only uses hard-woods that will sound fast, precise and detailed because of their high density. Typically the differences are rather minute unless going from a soft wood to a hard wood, like Cherry wood to African Blackwood.
All you really need to know with headphones is that a softer wood will have more decay and more sense of roundness to notes, and a harder wood which will be slightly more precise with harder edges to notes.
I forgot all about the Lawton cups. I own the Emu Teaks and the TR-X00 Ebony and I knew it was the same driver, but I was of the impression the tuning was slightly different aside from the wood. I’m likely incorrect on that though. I knew I had seen different EQ recommendations for all the Fostex woods and only ever one set for each ZMF variant, so I assumed there was more to it
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In any case Antpage2, I like the look of the bubinga so I’d probably dish out the extra money for it personally. I’ve heard the Sapele and they were awesome, so I really do think it’s a visual preference with the ZMFs. I am waiting on my blackwood Aeolus with brass grilles and rods as I write this.
Edit: this is the Auteur, but I loved the look of the blackwood and brass since I saw it:
I do think the standard sapele with black grilles looks nice too
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yeah the bulbinga looks like this:
the regular stock sapele looks like this:
so you can see why i’d prefer the Bulbinga lol. But i got nervious about how it may change the sound so i canceled the order and got the Sapele Aeolus lol.
This is the page with the Bulbinga deal as well as many others, they are B-stock and Demo units refurbished for a discount:
I noticed that when i bought the Bulbinga it showed as sold out on this page. when i canceled the order they are back in stock lol. so i think theres only 1 available. if you want it better get it now.
I’ve got the stock Verites with Silk Wood coming as well. I asked for silver (stainless?) grilles and rods on those, and Zach told me he would stain the wood darker to complement the colors better. So I know for sure one pair to the next will look different, even before you get into the varying nature of wood grain. I read up on all their headphone a LOT before taking the plunge, and I really do get the impression that people pay the upgrade fee for ltd run woods based on looks over anything else. That said, if he didn’t happen to have the blackwood ltd run with Aeolus I would have happily ordered the stock version because it also looks great
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Yeah I don’t know if the wood really made a difference on the sound. For kennerton stuff for example, the wood didn’t make a sonic difference to my ears, and was mainly visual preference. Another example would be the Klipsch hp3 as the woods were mainly for looks. Audeze is the same way too imo, where the woods didn’t make a significant sonic difference
Wood will only make a real difference if it was designed to imo
That’s been my experience of late too. Truthfully I haven’t put on the Ebonies in awhile, so recency bias informed my opinion
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I’m not sure there is a]enough volume that for similar densities it will make that much difference. Wood is a big deal in musical instruments because it’s designed to resonate, and makes a big difference. In a headphone, I’d expect the designs to limit resonance, so it shouldn’t really matter outside of aesthetics.
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My understanding is: e-mail Zach with your sonic preferences, your wood preferences, and your finishing/accessories preferences. If there is a conflict he’ll guide you. As per Onaha’s quote from the ZMF wood page, if you want either a longer decay or a shorter decay mention that in your e-mail so Zac can clarify which of the available wood options will be preferable.
I would trust that Zac knows what he’s doing and will offer those woods that work well with the specific headphone model’s design as the list of available options. If someone requests a wood that Zac knows will compromise the model’s sound signature, he’ll warn the customer about that.
Polygonhell’s point – that wood choice is key in musical instruments due to resonance properties – highlights where some confusion may be coming from. In headphone design I suspect you more often want the driver to do the resonating and the housing to dampen secondary resonances than vice versa. Surely, what you don’t want is for any housing material to either amplify or dampen specific audible frequencies. That would create sharp spikes or dips in the frequency response.
For the most part, yes. I’m going to keep going back to the fostex biodyna headphones because they are a great example. They are designed to have the wood play a role in the sound (like an instrument lol) and are sensitive to woods being changed. With similar densities it’s not a big difference, but going from different woods that have different properties it is fairly noticable. You can dampen the inside to reduce the effect of the wood, or you can let the wood play a role in the sound
Every object has a resonance. Heavier and denser wood is liable all things being equal to act better under the circumstances we care about here. But guess what if you apply Sorbothane and/or dynamat to any headphone frame you are going to decrease resonances.
a segway. how does the type of wood affect speaker cabinets? I know a lot of people build stuff out of laminated MDF cause it’s CHEAP, but dunno how it is for sound quality benefit / enhancement vs. other woods.
I would say that the cabinet design is 30-50% of how the speaker actually preforms imo. It really varies by design and manufacturing
Again the goal is to reduce the vibrations from the material, MDF is actually not a terrible material for Speakers.
Most designs are based around ideal none resonant cabinets, lengths, sizes of port and port depths all matter.
The cabinet design is fairly important when it comes to the final sound, and working with the material and understanding how it affects the sound is very important as you say. There are great MDF speakers and there are pretty poor MDF speakers. It really depends on the overall design