to pads affect the sound of your headphones absolutely in fact they matter a ton let's talk about it look at how much snow is out there that is crazy I've been shoveling out of that for a few days which is plenty of time to pad roll through a million things in my collection if you haven't already you should watch my previous video on this channel talking about audio terminology bright warm dark Etc because we're going to go through and use some of those terms in today's video you can find that at the link in the
video description anyways I'm DMS you're watching the headphone show by headphones.com let's talk pads the simplest way to explain it is the pad is the room you think about it like this well there's a speaker driver inside here your little headphone driver between that and your ear there's the pad and do you want to have a big Concrete Hard surfaced room do you want to have a soft treated room well it depends on the sound you're after and that's going to totally affect the tonal characteristics of whatever you're listening to for example on this ht650
if I throw solid leather pads on it well it's going to turn in into a very sealed up tight space my mid base is going to become very warm very elevated and some parts of the trouble might become peaky as well of lore pad well that's the opposite end of the spectrum it doesn't seal very much compared to say a solid leather pad it's going to let a lot of those low frequencies out usually and you'll end up with a headphone that is more mid forward or potentially bright depends on how it's all set up
but another thing to consider is the density of the foam a lot of these pads have different Foams in them and well that changes the sound characteristics a lot for example this is the same headphone with multiple pads and this is not a unique case you can do this with almost any headphone and that's where things start to get a little bit dicey do you want to replace your pads with an aftermarket one or do you want to use the stock pads because a lot of times an aftermarket pad will make things worse but sometimes
it could make it better and it all depends on your personal preferences an example being a lot of the deconi pads tend to add a bit of mid bass then some people like the additional warmth there are some pads from the Coney like the ones for Diana that actually make the sound more neutral and measure better then there's these pads from zmf for the HD 650 6xx 600 and so on that also make the headphone measure a little bit better and sound even more neutral I did a video on these by the way if you
haven't seen it you can check it out also at the link in the video description it's pretty cool the thing to note about pads is that they don't just make a subjective difference they make an objective difference headphones will measure very very differently depending on the pads you put on them in most cases if you like the sound of your headphone your best just replacing the pads with more stock pads from the manufacturer but if you want to mix things up that's when you might start considering alternative pad options or if Comfort is a considerable
problem for example I wanted to make my grato sr325x measure and sound a little bit better so I replace the pads with a modified pad and then some other little tweaks to them and well as you can see they measure a lot closer to the Target I was going for the other thing to keep in mind is that pads do not last forever every pad no matter how expensive it is or how cheap it is will eventually have to be replaced it is like tires on a car it's like an oil change it's just a
part of maintenance for a headphone and other things like this soft cushy headband on top well that's eventually going to have to be replaced too and that's just a part of it when you're budgeting to buy a headphone when you're thinking about buying a headphone look at the price of pads as well and remember you're probably gonna have to replace these every few years now some might last longer but for example the HD 650 and 6xx pads the more they age the more the treble and bass start to roll off and you end up with
more of a mid-range focused headphone so they change over time as they start to wear out more and more and this goes for a lot of headphones I mean it's pretty shocking if you have a three to four year old pair of pads on an hd6xx and you put a brand new pair on it's like whoa there's bass and treble now so so keep that in mind the moral of the story is that pads matter a lot they're very important whether you're pure objectivist and you care about measurements a bit of everything or if you
were on the subjective train and all you care about is how it sounds or anyone in between you should care a lot about the pads for your headphones they're the room these little speakers reside in and they will totally shape the sound Comfort tonality Sound Stage and all other facets of the listening experience and yes I did say soundstage pads can change almost anything about a headphone zmf has really capitalized on this because their headphones well they come with a ton of different pad options you could buy an Atrium or an aeolus and pick a
dozen different pads to get a dozen different sounds tuned to your liking the same goes for their close backs and really you could do this with any headphone the big thing to keep in mind is that a lot of This is highly subjective and your mileage will vary you might find a pad that is perfect for you but someone else might hate it and that is is okay in fact I kind of expect that'll happen a lot so the final question should you change your headphone pads well honestly I know it's a disappointing answer but
it is up to you take in mind and consider everything that I've told you today if that adds up to something you want to do well go for it there's a lot of great pad manufacturers on the market and sometimes even the oems that make the headphones have different options for them as well we're all just listening to Wiggly air in front of our ears have fun with it do what you want to do enjoy audio the way you want to enjoy it I think that's going to wrap up this video don't forget those other
videos I Linked In the video description check those out but that is going to wrap it up guys if you like this video please leave a like down below comment let me know what you want to see in the future if you want to get active in the community you can have the Forum or Discord both Linked In the video description as always don't forget to stick around subscribe for more videos like this in the future until next one guys peace [Music]
