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So just got these a few days ago and have to say as advertised. They definitely boost the bass it is not crazy amounts but it is very noticeable and also the added benefit of a bit more soundstage to them as well. Going back and forth between pads and still do not hear anything that has been lost on the pad change. Yes they are expensive as I paid $260 for them but I am not regretting it in the least . It is a upgrade .

260$ for pads, crazy. I wonder how they measure now

Well they are $4500 headphone’s and the pads attach magnetically so you can’t just throw on some Brainwavz on them . The porting is in the base of the pad as the originals are flat so not easy to do. I have seen some using some spacers to lift the pads up a bit to maybe give the same effect but these work always without worry so I’m good.
What would be a acceptable price for you for a specifically designed pad that yes only works with one headphone?

I guess that's the point, they make a proprietary system so you can't buy/effectively use other pads without modding and have to pay hundreds for their special ones

I read "New Abyss Diana Ross" and was really confused for a couple of seconds

So all headphones should be made the same shape and size? So you can use any pads with them ? So no room in your world for advancement it shall be all the same.

Sorry but it is “ New Abyss Diana Bass Ported Pads” .

Uh oh, she's in The Bad Place...

Dekoni makes pads for them, so it must not be that difficult...

She moved to Detroit?

That's not what I said

If they didn't use a more expensive design that includes magnets then 3rd party options would be more plentiful and likley easier to diy without having to worry about damaging more expensive pads or a mounting/magnet system

Lots of headphones have proprietary pad designs, but most dont require additional mounting rigs, you can get a 3d printed rig like you can for audeze or monolith that accept universal pads, but I'm not sure if that's possible for these

That much and I bet they are not even uniformed. Ever since they brought pad making in house they have looked like my wrinkled leather chaps on the floor.

You would have to send them to ASR to find out, the company doesn’t care enlightening their customers on those matters.

Abyss has used magnets to secure their pads for the AB-1266 OG’s in about 2013 or so not for sure of the time frame but close to ten years now. So it is not like people have not had a chance to replicate them.
The thing is there are a lot more HD-650’s and Sundara’s out there than Abyss Diana’s and you can find pads for them easily and they both use very different mountings to secure them . Pretty hard to adapt those to the Diana’s and vise versa.
While you think $260 is crazy for pads I get it but to mod something for a very unique headphone like these the time and labor would be so much more.
You might believe that they designed them so no one else can make easy to replicate ones.
They pop off and on in seconds why doesn’t everyone do it this way ?

I didn't know "the Abyss" was one of Detroit's nicknames 🙂

Amir got made to look a fool over that controversy and was rinsed clean by the audio community. He was proved to be a pseudoscientist that only cares about consistency when it’s easy for him. Don’t misremember what happened in the end.

> It is a upgrade .

I agree. They are my new daily driver.

Edit: ^Psst, ^it ^might ^not ^be ^safe ^for ^us ^Abyss ^owners ^here. ^We ^might ^have ^to ^head ^over ^to ^/r/headphoneporn

forgive me if I am interpreting your tone incorrectly but it seems like you might be a bit deep in the rabbit hole from the way u are talking about these pads.

Your money is your money but my question is that have you tried EQ-ing beforehand? Because I feel that the bass boost you get from these pads could be easily EQ-ed to your liking.

Is it a bad thing? It's your choice in the end to buy or not to buy a product, but you even don’t have it but yet complaining about it, LOL! If a niche product company decide to make exclusive stuff for their premium product, it's their right to do so.

Yes and I'm sure you've never once criticized the price of an expensive item you didn't desire, I'm such a complainer.

Just as I'm sure you've never questioned a companies decision to make something less consumer friendly and proprietary

Again, you don’t have to buy it. I'm definitely never complained about certain cars being overly expensive or watch, for example. It's a products for people with money, why should I care? If you want something consumer friendly you just buy a consumer friendly product, that's it.

I was there for all of it. I don't see why its just this headphone that couldn't be measured properly and he measured two of them and they both produced different levels of distortion and bass.

Assless, I presume...

Well there are two things that go into that:

1. As it retains to my comment. It wasn't about the headphone it was about his methodology and laziness. He is well aware that industry standard practice is multiple seatings and using an average and for good reason. But no no no, not for good ole "Mr. Measurements", he trusts his ears, they are afterall, so well trained that they are registered pieces of scientific equipment. Let me repeat that, "Mr. Objectivity" doesn't use the industry standard practice but instead uses his ears because he is too lazy to do multiple seatings. Should we get into the levels he listens at and how much hearing loss he must have suffered at this point? No? Are his ears not susceptible like us mere mortals?
2. Whether having that high of a level of distortion is another thing. I am not here to defend Abyss and it does seem strikingly high. But it always comes back to one important thing, is it audible? Well as someone that has owned the Diana V2, and moved on from it because it wasn't their taste, it is 100% inaudible. I even played around with EQ a lot on that headphone even adding >+6db bass shelfs and still, absolutely nothing. So the question is, why if it is not audible, does he hammer the point home and compare <$50 headphones to them saying they are the worse than those even if they were the same price? Why did he double down on everything and try to use big words to make himself not look like a hack? I don't know. What I do know is that Amir is a fraud and has been proven so many times. None of this would matter if he didn't claim to be an objectivist and all about the measurements when his own laziness doesn't even allow for him to do the bare minimum. But as it stands he keeps preaching and thus, he deserves to be exposed.

At the end of the day, I traded mine for an LCD-5 and would never go back. Although they did have a naturalness to their midrange that I had never heard before and still never since. I don't even know how to describe it other than it just felt like the singer was truly in the room with me I was in the room with the singer when I closed my eyes. It was the first time music videos annoyed me because I could tell the room the instruments were recorded in was not the same room the video was shot in because the reverberation of the room was all wrong. I have never experienced anything else that had that quality.

Meze Empyrean pads are also magnificent but cost 110 bucks less. And they even have magnets for quick swapping.

Cool. EQ increases bass for free tho.

Please tell me you didn't fall for their snake oil cables as well.

I bet you will see a little less deep sub bass, and more higher sub bass above a certain point. Basically the more you let the driver vent, the louder and higher up the bass boost gets, and the more sub bass gets leeched out.

Audezes can get a slight bass boost if you use dense velour pads. The bass cut is so low that you don't lose any usable sub bass, and the boost is so wide and smooth that it creates a decent slope. They ought to default to velour pads IMO!

Apparently it is/was. See recent Zeos video and comments by Dekoni on prototyping them. I think the new Dekoni pads are some type of Abyss collab and are included in the new model but I didn't get too far in the video because Zeos was shilling so hard it was getting obnoxious.

Amir basically runs a cult so many people active on ASR don't really care if his measurements are meaninglessly or not and many are convinced bigger / lower number = better / worse even if it isn't audible. Amir also does his "listening tests" after measuring but his 70 year old ears are infallible. On the other hand the Abyss guys seem like pretentious clowns.

I think Amir and Abyss deserve each other.

I'm glad they finally made these. From what I've read abyss headphones have always benefited greatly (in the bass department) from an air gap. Still waiting for the closed back Diana's. Can't wait.

It’s always interesting when a $4500 pair of headphones need an upgrade.

Sir, of course ! ;p

I think this about sums it up.

They are a match made in heaven.

Ugh, you're just repeating tired old things that have all been settled over there. Like the sustained 94db vs peak and on the mounting... You just don't like him or the people on the site and you're missing the point of that site in general as its not headfi. Its about the objective performance of the hardware. You just don't like him or his listening conclusions even though it seems that you accepted the hardware results. I don't read audiophile review articles about impression as they are worthless to me. The data says far more if you have reference points to compare it to. Again the site is about hardware not his listening conclusions.

I had the diana v2 as well and I thought it was "meh" too. Probably a reason you like the LCD-5 despite it having a similar FR, ear pads and closeness to the ear is the incredibly low amounts of distortion. Even though you EQ'd a bass shelf on the Diana the distortion from bass is far less audible than in other frequencies. The fact that the distortion is so bad in the places that matter if you wanted to EQ on top of it being so bad stock, is an objective failure for an audio company selling high "fidelity" audio, as its not.

I wouldn't necessarily call them an upgrade. The TC with the original pads were still the best headphone on the market to me. This is just a sidegrade for people who like bass boost

I think maybe you should listen to the “tired old things” because they are true. They are only settled for Amir’s sheep. Amir is the worst and most dangerous influencer in this hobby because he is a fraud. Zeos, Josh, etc may not be trustworthy but they never claimed to be objectivists. Amir claims objectivity and science and then runs bull shit tests with his own intuition and then castigates anyone that disagrees with him along with his minions (you) because, ya know, science or something. So Zeos and Josh get a pass because they are not claiming to be anything so no harm no foul, but Amir does not get a pass and why I refer to him as a fraud. You bring up not liking him and you are correct, but that has nothing to do with him personally but instead his laziness and unscientific process that he then tries to make people feel bad about by using big words that he then comes to also be found incorrect on.

You are also incorrect that I trust his hardware measurements. I do trust the measurements resolve did, because he follows industry standard practices, and am not trying to claim the Diana does not have high distortion numbers. I also have no ties with HeadFi other than I use their classifieds.

I do find it sad that you think a graph can tell you all you need to know about headphones when our current measurement/interpretation ability is not able to tell use a fair bit about a headphone I.e. slam, detail, soundstage, etc. just use your own ears and you will see how wrong Amir is.

Your last point is just flat out wrong. I EQd more than just bass and never had a single issue with distortion. I’m inclined to believe you have never heard a Diana because you just keep taking about distortion. Again, it wasn’t the headphone for my taste, but if you are bringing up distortion as if it is audible in anyway you are a liar or probably bought shitty source equipment based on Amir’s recommendation.

Happy Listening! (Does not include sine sweeps)

Your points are mostly about your self admitted animosity towards Amir and constructing false framing, false dichotomies and straw men. I have no interest in debating that. Also, you can't tell me what I hear or don't hear or what headphones I have owned or how data is useful for me and in what way.

I keep talking about distortion because that is what these "TOTL" high "fidelity" headphones produce and it can be audible and these headphones obviously have variations in how they preform. Abyss is selling people a "feeling", not fidelity. Pretty obvious why you like your LCD-5 more, IMO.

I'll continue to listen to 1khz sine sweeps, its all I listen to, and I sometimes sit in silence with my headphones on listening to graphs..../s

In the case of the Abyss, he both measured it wrong and it's also just a bad headphone, intentionally compromised to produce a certain coloration (which to many people is enjoyable, I suppose).

It's also a bit tricky to gauge what constitutes "correct" measurement because the Abyss headphones are intentionally ported, meaning even perfect seal on rig produces some bass rolloff. Even so, the distortion there is still unacceptable for the price, that much I agree with.

Another example of him measuring wrong is any of his Stax reviews. You'll see that his Stax plots all have extreme rolloff in the bass, which just is not the case when properly fitted on a human head.

It's known in the community that the contour of Stax pads makes it hard to seal properly on traditional measurement rigs which do not have malleable human skin. They're designed this way to avoid needing any clamping force, preventing pressure and damage to the delicate diaphragm.

Despite having this explained, Amir hand-waves it away by claiming this is also how he hears them on his head. Which is within the realm of possibility of course (and is a fair criticism to make that the headphone is not suitable for some head shapes), but is not representative of the real performance of the headphone in normal circumstances.

Then there's his Stax amplifier measurements, where he argues with Kevin Gilmore after being told that his measurements are totally wrong due to using an incorrect load, forcing the amps to drive something they were never intended to.

It's a common theme for Amir to double down on his incorrect takes and try to discredit people who criticize him.

I've noticed that even a lot of his less questionable measurements end up being incomplete, and he basically just measures whichever plots he feels like at the time, instead of providing a consistent test suite to compare different amps with. Just look at how many times someone in the comments has to ask him to make a 32-tone FFT, for example.

Then for the longest time he never bothered to get a balanced 32 ohm load, making it impossible to compare balanced with single-ended amps from his measurements. It would've been as simple as soldering two resistors to an XLR connector, but he never bothered.

It's lazy and unacceptable for someone claiming to be "scientific".

I wouldn't care as much if it weren't for his large following, so the misinformation ends up being propagated far and wide and defended by people who understand even less about audio gear.

Might have to check that out.

I’m hoping they have the closed backs at CanJam NYC in a little over a month.

So you have heard the Super Conductor cable ?

There is nothing to hear. It's a cable. Cables don't change the sound of headphones. THAT is a scientific FACT :)

And I guess you are the science?

Not me specifically, no.

But I guess, from your tone, that you don't even care :)