iris_burns•12d agoProlific Poster

I finally got better bass by stuffing my earcups with cotton balls

Had these old Audio-Technica ATH-M50s that always sounded hollow on the low end. Read a forum post about using acoustic dampening, so I grabbed some cotton balls from the bathroom and stuffed a few into each earcup behind the driver. Tested it with some electronic tracks and the bass got punchier without being muddy. Anyone else tried this kind of cheap mod for tuning headphones?

3 comments

3 Comments

patriciamoore12d ago

Wait, are you sure you're putting the cotton behind the driver and not just wadding it in the earcup? The whole trick is to lightly dampen the backwave, so that's actually kind of the right idea, but you gotta be careful not to block the driver's vents at the back. If you just jam cotton balls in there randomly you'll end up killing the soundstage and making it feel like a clogged mess, so you gotta test it little by little.

paul_morgan9d ago

Read a thread on Head-Fi a while back where some guy measured this exact mod with a frequency response rig. Honestly, he found that cotton balls actually added a little resonance in the upper bass that made things sound punchier, but it also killed a lot of the airy treble. Tbh, I think the bigger issue is most people stuff too much in there and end up with a muffled mess. Ngl, a single thin layer of felt or some acoustic foam cut to size probably works better and is way more consistent. At least you didn't try using toilet paper, I saw someone do that once and it basically disintegrated inside their cans.

the_lucas9d ago

@patriciamoore that reminds me of the time I put foam inside my truck door panels to stop rattling and it just made everything worse.