****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
It's almost 2:00pm on a hot Friday afternoon out in the country. When I got back from my bicycle ride at 10:00, my mailwoman was tossing these up on my front porch, about 34 hours after I ordered them from Amazon. Is that not incredible! And for free shipping? I put on a pot of coffee and tore into this package. I ordered these to replace the stock pads on a brand new set of HIFIMAN HE400s planar magnetic, open back headphones. There was nothing wrong with the stock pads. Based on personal experience installing Brainwavz and Dekoni earpads on several other headphones that I own, it's really a no brainer. I knew these would improve the sound in 95% of headphones with stock pads. Earpads attach to HIFIMAN headphones with a ring that clips into anchor slots. The ring is necessary and is permanently attached to the stock pads, so having not ordered a new ring from HIFIMAN and knowing that I would gladly sacrifice the stock pads for Brainwavz, I gently tore the ring away from the stock pad. The ring is perfectly round. The Brainwavz are oval, but recommended here on Amazon for this particular headphone. I've read where people struggle to stretch and bend this ring into these earpads and I did that at first, but there was so much tension on the ring that it kept popping out of the anchor slots. I looked around for a better solution. I searched YouTube and found this friendly guy struggling with the same challenge. He explained the difficulty fitting the round mounting ring into the oval shaped Brainwavz and offered an interesting solution. He took a sharp pair of scissors and trimmed the fore and aft sides of the mounting ring, cutting off a few equal millimeters of plastic on both sides, then slipped the ring into the new earpads. He then trimmed the rear of the earpads just enough to allow the male end of the attachment to be unencumbered by fabric, letting it click into the female part of this system. I got out my scissors and commenced to cutting. Mine turned out a little sloppy but once they were clipped into place, no one knows the difference. Now for the magic. I softly donned my HE400s and opened my TIDAL app. The first thing I noticed was that I could barely hear the air conditioning unit in my window. Huge difference from the stock pads. These are some of the most comfortable earpads I've used, and I've replaced pads on about 15 pair of headphones with the aforementioned pads. I love the memory foam, so isolation gets an A+. Comfort gets an easy A. I first dialed up Adele's Skyfall. Unbelievable! The bass response and the fullness of the orchestra blew me away. The fabric covering the drivers in the Brainwavz is thinner that the fabric that comes with the stock pads, thus letting the sound of cymbals etc.. to clearly reveal themselves like I've never heard on this already kickass set of headphones. Next I dialed in "One" by U2 with Mary J. Blige. Vocals remain basically unchanged (already excellent). The abundance of of sound was incredible. When Mullen thumped that bass drum... I could feel it. All of this is an improvement over the stock pads. I don't want to overemphasize the improvement on the low end of these headphones because I don't want to give the impression that they are now like basshead cans, they are not; but the enhancement to the lower frequencies is stunning. The bass is punchy, clear, fast and full, nothing like cloudy. A+ for sound improvement. These pads, in my subjective opinion allow for more clarity over the stock pads. I'm very happy with the results. Another thing to note is that this is the first pair of angled earpads that I've installed on any headphones. That in itself may be responsible for the dramatic enhancement in overall sound quality that I am experiencing. "Comforatbly Numb" is playing now. Wow! Keep in mind that installing these "Suitable For Large Over The Ear Headphones Like AKG, HIFIMAN Etc.." was a serious challenge, the resulting improvement in comfort and sound makes the struggle well worth the effort. I may have trimmed too much off of the back of my pads that might eventually lead to a failure, but if that happens, I'll buy some more just like these and be more careful during the modding process. I highly recommend these Brainwavz Angled Memory Foam earpads.
