Dekoni Audio Attenuation Ring for Fostex Massdrop X00, TH610 & TH900 Headphones

It sound darker with better bass

Perfect Fit. Used it on my new pads for my TH-X00 Purple Hearts headphones. There was no change on sound quality thx to the accurate replication of the original Fostex attenuation ring.

The audio technica w5000 is a great headphone hampered by having a finicky fit. To address the fit issue, I pad swapped the living hell out of it. The issue with this is that this changes the sound a bit too much. After much exploration, I thought I finally had the solution with Dekoni's A/AD pads. These got closest to the stock sound but added a bit too much mid bass that spoiled the experience. I decided to see what the hub-bub about these attenuation rings was and applied them to my w5000 with the A/Ad pads and am happy to report this combination finally fixed my issues with the headphone. Further experimentation with other pad types from other brands (ZMFs in particular) and the attenuation rings on other headphones also yield positive results. While this is all well and good, I can't help but feel that $15 is a bit much for what these rings are (thin sheets of plastic). Suppose it can't be helped given they are a smaller company with a somewhat niche market; and given these rings did something for me, I'll just leave it at that.

Let's be real, these are at best $.50 discs of plastic. There's really no reason for them to cost this much other than the fact that they work and suckers like me will pay it. I've loved my Fostex Purplehearts since I got them, but never could wear them for long because the pads were uncomfortable and pinched my ear. I got new pads, that fit great, but the sound changed for the worse. The best way I could explain it was everything was...looser. Mids would get out of control on some songs. Mid bass would get tubby. It was just messy. After seeing other people recommend the attenuation rings for these issues on forums I decided to give it a try. The sound I always loved was back, but was even BETTER. Mids are cleaner than with the stock pads, and because everything is tighter I can really tell how much the soundstage has opened up due to the taller pads. Bottom line, if you're swapping pads on the TR-x00, either cut out your own rings, or pay the lazy tax and buy these. You'll thank yourself.

I'm using a set of TH600s, so maybe that has something to do with my results since these headphones weren't designed with this shape in mind, like the TH610s, or X00s, Ebonies, Purplehearts etc. But I'm using a set of Geekria pads that have the oval shape, so I was curious if this ring would help with anything. To me it just kind of compressed and muddied the sound, removed the sound stage. Definitely colored the sound, just not to my liking. But that doesn't mean you won't like it! Especially if you have the headphones that I mentioned previously.. I'm assuming anyway. They're well cut, they fit good.. etc. My only concern is that they're plastic where as the stock attenuation rings in fostex pads are like a papery material.. which makes me think these my cause issues with reflections.. I'm not sure. Just wanted to give my experience. If you're bored, can't hurt to mess around with these.