Measurement setup
After more than 40 years of listening experience, working backstage and in front of the stage, semi-professional recordings of live and studio music, and countless concert visits across many genres, I certainly trust myself to be able to judge headsets and headphones subjectively. There are certainly many colleagues who can do this even better than I can, but unfortunately there are also many publications where hand and ear application replace experience and skill and most readers are then hardly able to separate one from the other.
In the end, the only thing that really remains is the merciless measurement on which the subjective assessment is based. But we don’t want to compete with the relevant audio specialists, so I don’t presume that much. The only difference is that my design can stand up to many a comparison, which is the best way to fulfill the purpose of our site: to give a neutral and unbiased assessment.
Measurement results
Ear cushions and the right fit: both criteria are decisive for acoustic success or failure in any case. How well the sofa cushions perform then, the measurement must show. My subjective feeling is still somewhat ambivalent, then as now, but more about that later. First, I ran through all four bass settings and superimposed the curves. I also doubt that it’s the padding, because the one bass dip at 70 Hz in the basic setting without mechanical bass boost (yellow) and the 80 Hz at the three levels of little (red), medium (white) and maximum (purple) was already really weird back then and still is.
I have to reproach myself that at that time (i.e. 8 years ago) I only measured with smoothed curves and a much worse equipment and that this dent was by far not as extreme for me. But never say never, someday I’ll run all the samples through this test again, In principle, the Custom One Pro does hit the Harmann curve (black underlay), at least above one kilohertz a bit. But everything below that is already frightening in parts. Unfortunately, I did not have the technical means to prove this nonsense.
If you turn the boost completely off, the low bass is missing and the drop between the upper bass (from about 100 Hz upwards) and the 50 Hz mark is downright brutal. You can hear that and it almost sounds like a hard electric low cut with the almost 14 dB++ drop. Especially since it never becomes less than 8 dB even after that. In the opposite case, all boost settings except the minimum one (red) are flat for the garbage can. Subjectively, everything rumbles with Boost to the point of godsend. Good, the dent created by the mechanical sounding isn’t quite as noticeable because it doesn’t interfere with the big bass drum underneath. You can’t argue away the consequences, because the mechanically influenced curve pushes all the way to the lower mids, then ends in a common groove at about 780 Hz.
The decay curves (burst decay) make the disaster even more visible. For direct comparison, I chose the minimum and maximum position in each case, and you don’t even have to label it all to know what’s what then. Let’s start with the touch of nothing at all. We see the nasty 70 Hz dip and the strong overhang at plenty of 100 Hz. Nothing more will come below that.
In extreme cases, however, it pushes the dent up by 10 Hz, while the cellar bubble rolls highly motivated into acoustic whiplash. You can also see very clearly where the purple curve (see above) really tightens the belt. At about 350 Hz, the forced diet is suddenly celebrated and the ears are softened with Slim-Fast. No, you really don’t need that.
To its credit, however, we have to admit that while it is the typical Jaden Jill Joel gaming bass bomber (it really exists) that many acoustically misguided streamers are so fond of, it then gallantly beats many a gaming headset in the areas where location and spatiality are the sole concern. So the softer pads don’t bother at all. You can’t listen to music with it anyway, it’s just too much or too little bass. But as of the mids, it is and remains a very good gaming headset. This is also a fact, with or without sofa cushions.
Summary and conclusion
I could have bought a Sharkoon Skiller SGH 50 on sale for the same money I spent on the repair components. Less image, worse looks but better sound, especially in the bass and the microphone. From that point of view, the rescue was also a kind gesture, because I don’t like to throw anything away and the Custom One Pro is really a prime example of completely messed up mechanical sounding. Exactly this unicorn factor probably saved the good piece.
Whether I will ever use the headset again, however, remains questionable, because even eight years ago it was the intrusive (or lack of bass, as the case may be) that tempted me to the Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro after just a few days so that it ended up in storage and remained there for so long.
Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro – Maturing in shelf or how a headset destroys itself
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