Hi Tomekichi! I don't have the technical know-how to explain why there's only magnets on one side, but I bet you can get an answer in the Ploopy Discord (or on Reddit!). I'd say the audio quality you get from these far exceeds most ~$100-150 CAD Headphones I've tried, and they're also open-source and infinitely repairable, so there's that to consider as well (not to mention you're saving $120 CAD to assemble them yourself vs the preassembled ones!) I haven't tried those Fostex headphones you've referenced, but the cheapest I can find them is around $230 CAD on Amazon, which is around the same price as preassembled Ploopy Headphones, and over $100 more than the DIY Ploopy Kit - did you buy them on sale or something? Either way they look like pretty interesting headphones with a lot of great design features :D Can you explain to me how the T20RP's are DIY-able? Can you build them from a kit as well? Or do you mean replacing parts/modding them after purchase? I've got a set of Sennheiser HD 25-1 II Headphones that have a lot of user-replaceable parts, which was one of my reasons for buying them also. Love when companies factor in the ability to extend the lifespan of their products through user-replaceable parts!

not an audio engineer or anything but from your description it sounds like it's a matter of polarization. These magnets are sitting sideways, so the side facing the coil/driver actually has BOTH the positive and negative poles on it. In contrast if you had them facing inwards only one side would be exposed. (you might be able to alternate them, which would create a similar effect, but I imagine the "resolution" of pole-flips plays some part in this so wider-pole-flips sound worse for some reason) If I'm right and it is a matter of polarization then I'd bet that the reason why these are different is that they're not "planar" (at least I don't think so, again, not an audiophile or audio engineer) but rather use the foam as a flexible membrane like normal drivers. Larger "true" planar headphones that have a flat sheet that vibrates without flexing (which I believe is what makes planar magnetic headphones different) would need equal-force across the plane or it would rotate, flex, etc. during travel, so instead of an alternating pattern they would likely want several points of "support" from the magnets to avoid putting... I *_think_* the technical term would be torsion, on the membrane. So if you had a sheet of paper with the edges fixed-in-place a normal driver (which again is how these appear to operate despite sharing some characteristics with a planar) then you'd make noise by pushing in on the center of the paper, like we see here. But if you had a sheet of paper that wasn't fixed at the edges, but was laying inside of a box so that it could move up and down but not side-to-side and you wanted to make noise with it you couldn't just push on it's center, you would want to lift it from several points so that it stays flat and doesn't bend or try to rotate under it's own weight/inertia. addendum : I did a tiny bit of extra digging just to sanity check this before I post something I *_entirely_* pulled out of my ass, and I think I'm ~80% right, but there could be some minor bits that are wrong based on my mental image of the headphones you're talking about. I was right that these are sort of acting like a weird hybrid between planars and dynamic drivers, and "true" planar magnetics do have two seperate magnetic planes, but I can't say for certain if my exact reasoning is right since I'm not a practicing audiophile and don't have much reference on their precise construction so am mostly relying on mental-models here.

github.com/ploopyco/headphones/wiki/Appendix-F:-Frequency-response-graph-interpretation Here's all the information for the frequency response of the headphones. Enjoy!

Here are the STL files: github.com/ploopyco/headphones/tree/master/hardware/mechanicals/STLs

Took about a week, but I'm located in Canada (as is Ploopy). Best way to get an idea for your particular location is to email them directly.

@@beepbuildsathing i asked on reddit😂

Hi. I think Ploopy did not intend for these to be used with other amplifiers, only their own. You can plug it in to any amp (or no amp, but it's much too quiet then) and test it out yourself using the 3.5mm y splitter that's included with the headphones.

It's just a build guide for those who want to see how it's put together. Nowhere do I mention or promise anything about a conclusion or sound test - not to mention the firmware was not in a great state when I built these (September 2023), so a sound test would not have sounded as it would today. They've made a LOT of firmware improvements since I recorded this video and overall I'd say they're a nice sounding set of open-back headphones, especially for the price they're asking. You are also now able to set up a custom EQ profile in their standalone software (github.com/ploopyco/headphones-toolbox/releases/tag/app-v0.0.5), not to mention tweak other things in there to your tastes. I may do a review and sound test in a later video, but the purpose of this video (as the title mentions) is a detailed build guide only. If you'd like you're more than welcome to make a video build guide in exactly the way you expect others to do so, but as someone who has several other jobs, has started a very small youtube channel, and not enough time in the day, this is the best I can do for those that are searching for a guide on how to assemble these headphones. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the criticism and will try to improve future videos, but please try not to compare someone with 2 videos to full-time content creators with hundreds (if not thousands) of videos, a dedicated recording space, most likely an editing team, and all the time in the world to make perfect videos.

@@beepbuildsathing Hi Dave sorry I wasn't trying to upset you just found your video shall we say unfinished. if you were the one watching your video instead of making it knowing nothing about these headphones are you saying what they actually sound like is not important to you ? For me and I expect a lot of others what they sound like is probably the most important bit of information when talking about headphones after all your not building them simply to look at. I appreciate that its really difficult to record how headphones actually sound without the right equipment so perhaps a description would have been sufficient to at least let your viewers know if these are even worth getting. Maybe making some comparisons to other headphones as a reference are they as good as or better than. Also pointing out what is their strengths or weaknesses. For example what is the bass response like, how good is the soundstage, what genres of music do they do best with are they good with heavy rock or acoustic guitar music ect. Only reason I made the comment to start with is than a conclusion about what you have built is almost universally done in every other build video so it was surprising by its absense here, the video itself is a good video just seems unfinished.

@@gges1605 Hey, I definitely understand what you mean. I will take your criticism to improve future vids, but unfortunately not much I can do about this one, short of creating a separate video (which I may do in the future). To be perfectly transparent, at the time I built these the audio quality was heavily hamstrung by the firmware so it was in a pretty rough shape compared to today - was distorting beyond certain volumes, which I found difficult to review or compare. At this point with all of the updates and the headphones toolbox Ploopy/the community has put out I'd compare it to a higher quality set of open backed headphones. Unfortunately my experience is almost entirely with close backed headphones so I don't have any headphones I've owned to compare it to. Initially it sounded like the headphone creators underestimated the loudness others expected from a pair of headphones which is why the firmware wasn't ideal, but they get pretty loud now and you can hear a great deal of detail across the frequency ranges. I appreciate your honesty, and will work on making more complete videos for y'all.

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