These days, I try to avoid agreeing to review the smaller things in tech.
There’s a never-ending list of little things that could be reviewed, and finding something
unique to say about each of them can actually take longer than some of my bigger product
reviews.
But when I do review the small stuff, it happens when I actually pay for it.
Today I’ll be reviewing the Dekoni Premium Leather and memory foam ear pads for my Beyerdynamic
DT990s.
Let’s see how this goes.
[Pre-Roll]
For those who didn’t know, my current headphones have been the Beyerdynamic DT990s (the 900
ohm version), which is a pseudo-closed-back, solid band headset.
It sounds great and the velour pads it comes with are fairly comfortable, but the pads
are thin and I’ve been looking for some thicker ones for a while.
Unlike most headphones, these are actually circular, so the normal oval-shaped pads won’t
fit properly, and even when they do, they seem to absorb a lot of the high-end detail,
thus defeating the purpose.
That is… until I was browsing Massdrop and came across the Premium leather memory foam
pads from Dekoni.
These come in
a really attractive box - which wouldn’t matter on the whole, but that gave me something
to store the pads that came with my DT990s in - so it was actually quite handy.
Installation was easy - they’re drastically easier and quicker to remove and install than
the pads that came with the headphones, oddly enough, which makes me really happy, as getting
the normal velour ones back on are a royal pain in the ass.
These are much thicker than the original pads, they feel almost like little pillows on my
head and give me more room for my ears to fit in than the original pads do.
I’ve been using them for about 2 months now and I love them.
I don’t usually like the pleather pads on things, but these are great.
I build up a little heat under them, but nothing major.
Plus, they’re easier to clean off than velour is, anyway.
They DO affect the sound profile, however.
The sound stage does not feel quite as open as it did before - more of the low end stays
in and hits you harder, whereas a tad bit of the high-end goes away, but they sound
much better than the big M50x BrainWavz pads I tried before, so that’s okay.
Since I run my headphones through a mixer, I was able to just turn up the high end for
my PC input a bit and it sounds just fine.
A potential source of problem is the fabric in the middle of the O of the pads.
Only the “Premium” version of Dekoni’s pads have these for my headphones - their
standard and velour series pads don’t seem to have this.
This is odd, as the fabric can cause a little extra muffling of the sound since these headphones
come with the fabric layer on the cans themselves.
I haven’t noticed this to be an issue, but it is strange.
Overall, I love these pads - they’re allowing me to wear my DT990s for much longer periods
of time without fatigue.
My only wish is that they made these for my AKG K7xxs - I would kill for some comfier
pads on those bad boys.