Drop X Koss ESP/95X Measurements
Dekoni Audio is pleased to share a “deep dive” look into our Koss ESP/95X line of Earpads, specifically tuned to elevate your listening experience.
We start with comfort, using our soft, high density, slow rebound memory foam for an extra plush experience that conforms to the shape of your face (and accommodates glasses stems). For optimum performance, we have covered the memory foam with Fenestrated Sheepskin. We ensured the pads mount just as securely as the stock pads. Finally, we shaped and measured the pads to tune the sound and share a preview of how they sound compared to stock pads.
In our measurements, we are sharing the raw data except to cancel out the ear response of our microphone dummy head. We have been fortunate to have acquired a certain well-known Audio Precision-based measurement rig, and will continue to keep the measurements coming! Some measurements by others are made with adjustments to reflect the effect that the shape of a generic inner and outer ear will have on the sound waves – we provide the raw data, because as every experienced audio enthusiast knows, we all have different ears! So, as part of a series of Dekoni Describes posts, we will walk our readers through understanding our graphs.
The first thing to understand about an uncompensated graph is that it will sound different to the listener than the graph will show. For one, we haven’t smoothed our graphs, so there are many peaks and valleys that would have been lost information, but also there are other factors, such as the human’s extra sensitivity to vocals, and that the shape of our ears and depth of our ear canals can actually amplify certain frequencies. For the purposes of swapping earpads, it is enough to say that a flat line along the 0 dB line wouldn’t sound “good” on these uncompensated graphs, a dip in the midrange is to be expected since human ears are more sensitive to that region, and mainly we want to focus on how a Dekoni pad compares to the Stock Vinyl pad.
We use supple, natural Sheepskin that is the softest and most breathable available today. Our Fenestrated (French for “windowed,” it has little holes in it) Sheepskin is almost indistinguishable from the stock pad, except for the slightly more linear bass extension as the frequency drops, and of course the comfort is improved with the leather texture, superior heat dissipation, and still easy to wipe clean with a cloth.
The subjective factor of experiencing headphones and earpads matters the most, of course. If it sounds good, it is good! We listen with our pads for several revisions before release, and we want to thank the reviewers and our patrons on Head-Fi and other platforms who have shared their experiences. Real user experience is the best judge, and we thank everyone who has tried to describe their experience!
Our Koss pads are available now at our fine dealers internationally, and dekoniaudio.com through the following link:
