In January,
I wrote about the trials and tribulations associated with the demise of my Beyerdynamic DJX1s. At the time I noted how fantastic
Martech, and Doug Jones in particular, had been about having the broken DJX1s repaired. In fact, the repaired headphones arrived shortly after I wrote that post.
That was the good news.
I’d been planning the mix that eventually became À La Carte for a while and was excited to have my full-sized cans returned to me so I could lay it down. My elation quickly changed to disappointment, however, once I plugged them into my mixing board. Within seconds of the beginning of the first track, I could tell that the left driver was slightly quieter than the right. I checked the balance on my mixer with both my JVC Marshmallows (In-ear) and my Grado SR-80s (open); the issued was not the mixer. Normally, the listener’s awareness of this kind of balance issue will fade within a few minutes. Like eyes, most of us have one ear that is slightly weaker than the other and the brain can compensate for the slight discrepancy. My awareness of the imbalance never went away, though. In fact, it seemed to get worse. Not only that, but after a couple of weeks of regular use both at the club and in the studio, the left driver developed a buzz on the kick drum of whatever track I was playing. That buzzing has been getting progressively worse as well and has now spread to the right driver like some kind of distortion virus. Long story short, rather than sink more time and money into shipping and handling for further repairs that may result in still further issues, I decided to save for the IEMs I spoke of so glowingly in January. The DJX1s have hung in my studio, limply, ever since.
Out of the blue two weeks ago, an email from another
Martech employee named Nathan Smith popped up in my inbox. He stated he had read my post about the troubles I had with the DJX1s and was enquiring as to whether I was satisfied with the outcome of the repair. Apparently, my blog had come up as a referring website in his webmaster tools and, curious, he had taken a peek. And boy, am I glad he did.
Stepping outside the events of the last couple of weeks, I’d like to touch for a moment on the root of what brought us to this point in our story; namely the general crappiness of DJ headphones. Every headset manufacturer on the planet has at least one set of silver-painted plastic, cup-swivelling, so-called "DJ" headphones marketed to the public based on toughness and driver size. While the drivers are indeed huge (most DJ headphones are in excess of 2”/50mm in diameter) I have yet to find a pair I would describe as robust. The issue with these plastic behemoths is invariably the swivel, either where it attaches to the ear cup or where it connects to the headband. If they’re going to break, that’s where they’ll let go. What gets me is that the vast majority of DJs don’t even use the swivels as they are allegedly intended, preferring instead to wear the headset in typical fashion with the headband over the head, one ear cup on, on off for monitoring. So, if virtually no one wears the swivelly headphones as intended, why continue to mass-produce what amounts to plastic garbage? Two reasons:
1) DJs from seasoned pros to bedroom beginners will pay any price for gear that they perceive is purpose-built for DJ equipment; and
2) When the headset breaks, that same DJ will buy the exact same brand and model for no other reason than they are what he/she has always used. Brand loyalty amongst DJs is the same as the loyalty displayed by musicians towards their guitar/bass/drums of choice and purveyors of DJ gear know it. They
count on it. Technics SL1200 turntables, Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD players, Pioneer DJM-800 mixers, and Sony V700DJ headphones are the equipment of the “serious” DJ and don’t you dare suggest otherwise; “serious” DJs will take your head off. An Ecler mixer or a Denon Cd player might be as good or better than the venerable offerings of Pioneer, but you’ll have a hard time getting most DJs to admit it. Once that touchstone of quality has been assigned, everything that comes after, regardless of manufacturer, is based upon it and thus inferior in the eyes of the DJ. The reason all DJ headphones look and cost the same is because Sony had so much success with the V700DJ at the $200 price point and everybody else (Beyerdynamic included) had to get in on the action. It’s a sad state of affairs and one that has forced me to start looking outside traditional DJ equipment tropes, like the custom IEMs I wrote about four months ago.
One small footnote to that post was a response I got from a friend of mine who happens to be an active member of
headfi.org, a forum catering to headphone audiophiles. He suggested I take a look at the
Beyerdynamic DT770s. As he suggested, I looked into them and was mightily impressed with what I found. Not only were they highly regarded as studio headphones, with an impressive isolation of 18dB, but they also featured a spring steel headband, sans swivel. Judging by the specs they would be a very difficult headset to kill, but their isolation still couldn’t match the IEMs I had in mind.
Back to my story: as I was saying, Nathan Smith from
Martech (
Beyerdynamic’s Canadian distributor) had emailed me to ask about my DJX1 repair. I related to Nathan what had happened to my DJX1s after they were returned to me along with a little rant about DJ headphones very much like the one above. He replied with a gracious offer to replace them completely or heavily discount a pair of DT770PROs. Just like that. I wasn’t interested in a repeat performance by the DJX1s, but I’ll take the DT770s, please. Send them forthwith.
Here’s some specs:
Beyerdynamic DT770PRO-250Transducer type: Dynamic Operating principle: Closed Weight without cable: 270 g Frequency response: 5 - 35,000 Hz Nominal impedance acc. to IEC 60268-7: 250 ohms Nominal SPL acc. to IEC 60268-7: 96 dB Nominal THD acc. to IEC 60268-7: <0.2% Power handling capacity acc. to IEC 60268-7: 100 mW Sound coupling to the ear: Circumaural Ambient noise isolation: approx. 18 dB (A) Single-sided cable w/ Gold-plated jack plugLength and type of cable: 3 m / coiled cable Nominal headband pressure: approx. 3.5 N And they arrived on Friday! Man, do they ever look good. The spring steel head band looks and feels really substantial, yet they’re significantly lighter than the DJX1s (330g vs 270g). The other big upside is that the headset appears to be almost completely modular. That is, all of the visible components can be easily and quickly replaced in much the same way as the Sennheiser HD25-1 II. So if, for example, I was to somehow bend the spring-steel band, I can easily replace it by simply quoting a part number. I sincerely wish that other headphone manufacturers would follow Beyerdynamic’s lead rather than producing all those Sony clones.
I’ll write back soon with my thoughts on their overall sound. I burned them in over the weekend and if all goes well this week I’ll be posting a new mix to go along with a review of the new cans.
Regardless of how they sound, I can’t stress enough how pleased I am with the service I’ve received from the folks at
Martech. They’re a quality outfit and they obviously understand that customer service is more important now than it’s ever been, especially while the economy is in freefall. Nathan and Doug, both scholars and gentlemen, deserve special recognition for their efforts. I really appreciate it, guys.
So what’s the moral of the story? I’m not sure there really is one, other than perhaps you get what you give. That and just occasionally, the wheel that doesn’t squeak sees some grease.
