Pad variation, unit variation, run variation… there are all kinds of potential variation factors. But in my case where I evaluated all three impedances (on the premium edition), controlling for the pads explained any meaningful FR differences among them. As someone else noted, there may be an additional difference with the 80 ohm variants specifically, but I have yet to investigate that. At the very least, the outcome here is that the impedance differences alone are not responsible for reports of differences in sound quality among these models, and similar differences could be observed when evaluating multiple different units of the same model.
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Thank you for the reply, Resolve. I’ve been using the DT-770 Pro versions (corrected above), rather than the premium versions. So maybe your measurements and results will not be as applicable to my headphones. I’ll be curious to see the results though.
Are you doing this with more than one model btw?
The new 5128 graphs from Rtings are proving to be quite useful as well. So I’m very grateful to finally have those.
To be clear, this was something I did a while ago. I am not currently doing it, as I no longer have the headphones in.
And yeah I tested this with the DT880 and DT990, with the different impedance versions of each.
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Thanks for clarifying this, Resolve. Since I haven’t seen any of the data or results related to this, I’ll continue to use graphs that match the impedance of my Beyer headphones. And also recommend that to others. Perhaps this is less important with the open or semi-open models than with the closed-back DT-770 Pro though. (?)
Based on my conversations with Beyerdynamic, the main difference between the different impedances is the thickness of the voice coil, which is probably responsible for both the different load impedances and sensitivities. Imo, this also results in some slight (but distinguishable, to my ears) differences in sound quality, which could be related to the different damping factors. And maybe also some slight differences in frequency response.
Since I can’t rule out any of the above, the most prudent choice imo is to use graphs that match both the model and impedance of the headphone. YMMV though.
DMS gives his take on the new DT 270 Pro. I bet these would sound almost as good as my DT 770 out of the box, if not possibly better. The pads look pretty small and compact though, and like they wouldn’t have quite as good pinna interaction. And there appear to be a few symmetry issues on the unit tested. Beyer is usually pretty good though with QC and driver matching. And I’d still be interested in giving these a little listen sometime.
Pretty good review overall, with some good comparisons to other similar headphones. And I appreciated the symmetry and impedance info as well. I wish DMS and other reviewers would include raw FR, distortion, and EGD as well (which will be old news to folks here).
Yeah those seemed rather good. It’s a shame about the cup size but from the reports I’ve seen, seems promising!
I’ve cued the video below to the graph showing the left-right channel balance (what I call symmetry). The difference between the lowest point in the midrange and highest point in the treble is around 3 dB. That’s enough to have a noticable impact on the imaging precision imo, if you pay attention to that kind of thing.
It’s probably correctable with separate EQ’s for each channel. But a bit of nuisance.
I mostly use headphones at home in a little makeshift studio. So don’t think I currently have need for something this compact. But I’d be curious to hear your take on these anyway. And whether you think they’re competitive with headphones like the AKG K371, Sony MDR-7506, FiiO FT1, Rode NTH-100, Shure SRH840A, and Adam H200. I know you don’t like the AT M50X, but that would also be an interesting comparison, since they both use smaller earpads. The pricing on the Beyer DT 270 Pro is very competitive with most of the above.
I like my current Beyers with velour pads. But I wish they could do a little better job on their tuning, without effecting the details. I’d probably buy one of their open-backs in a heartbeat if it had a decent (less bright) tuning, and good drivers.