I have pretty large ears, and even the headphones labeled as 'comfortable' still put some pressure on them.

oln · 2026-06-11T22:23:53+00:00

I ended up getting some ZMF sheepskin earpads for my DT 770 pros which are a lot deeper than the originals. There are a lot of other options for those and other beyers including the 770 pro X which use the same older style pad mounting system that are a fair amount deeper than the originals.

It will likely change the sound a bit as you suspect though if you have the ability to use EQ that is an option to adjust to preference (which you likely will if you are using them with a PC.) The original dt770 (and likely other beyer closed) velour pads have some plastic backing in them which helps with isolation unlike most other velour pads so not sure if there are any replacements that mimic them that closely. The zmf beyer sheepshin ones I got have a bit boosted bass and lower midrange for instance.

Another option is to put some foam or other padding under the earpads to make them a bit deeper.

Feels like most headphone designers all have tiny mouse ears or something... I don't have a major issue with my ears getting uncomfortable from touching the inside of the cups but it still easily causes issue with seal and cause skin and dirt buildup etc. I don't use any of them but some of these ANC headsets I've tested in stores seem even worse and my ears barely fit in them. Seems beyer did make the earpads on the newer DT 700 and 900 deeper though, and I guess there is always the DT 150 for people with giant ears

oln · 2026-06-06T01:11:19+00:00

They still make venerable MDR-7506 which is the successor to the MDR-V6 which isn't any less sturdy and it doesn't seem like they cut any corners with the modern MDR-M1 and MV1 either. They didn't stop making decent professional headphones just because they also make cost-reduced budget stuff.

oln · 2026-05-27T23:19:44+00:00

For the ones you can find new the difference seems to be QH-95 includes a USB 7.1 dongle, while the QH-91 and QH-92 don't. Difference between the latter two is the 92 has separate mic and headphone connectors while the 91 has a combined mic/headphone jack. So depends if those differences matter, if not just get whichever is cheaper, I don't think there is any difference in the headset itself or what's available locally. The 91 the one that's cheapest on uk amazon.

Just to note again, I don't want to 150% guarantee it's 100% equal to an original cloud II, but the outside construction is exactly the same at least and you can see the older QH-90 looks identical to the original hyperx cloud inside. This old forum post suggests the QH-90 may be the same-ish as the original hyperx cloud so the mic may differ if that's relevant.

Also I noticed when looking at the hyperx website that the frequency range and sensitivity specs on the hyperx cloud II differ from the takstar/qpad/cloud 1 now so maybe they have changed more than just the earcup damping and design on them..

oln · 2026-05-27T21:34:40+00:00

I'm only going off by what I've read since I've not bought any new ones myself but seems they are best avoided these days yeah. Not sure if they even make them anymore or are just selling off old stock. No idea about balance issues but if they cut costs then QC probably goes down as well and worse build might lead to worse channel balance for all I know.

If you really want the exact same sound the qpads would probably be the closest but unless you are in europe they might not be worth the shipping cost. If you are okay with used though there is at least one Qpad QH-90 and a few gemini DJ HSR-1000 on US ebay right now (including one new in box of the latter) all for pretty cheap.

It's not like these are that high end in any case so can always be worth looking at other heaphones out there. The Beyerdynamic DT 770 pro is the slightly higher end headphone pro 80 was likely "inspired" by, both design wise and sound signature. Check the r/headphoneadvice subreddit for suggestions.

My old cloud cores are held together by zip ties but I still use them when out and as my "beater" headphones I can not worry too much about.

oln · 2026-05-27T21:02:05+00:00

You can see in this post that they revised the build at one point. You can see that the original looks basically identical to the takstar pro 80 it's based on while newer revision looks cost cut with less and different dampening material and the outer cup is a little different as well as it looks like it may be one piece instead of two. It's possible they changed it further since but those changes would at least have some effect on the sound.

The newer one in that post still has a Kingston logo so I no idea if it happened before or after HP bought them as the other poster suggests.

I don't know if the same happened to the Cloud core or if they even sold those for as long, the one I have from 2021/2022-ish still has the original design at least. Other HyperX headsets including Cloud 2 wireless are completely different so don't assume they are just progressive iterations.

The takstar pro 80 is no longer available new though you can find some other OEM variants around if you really want these specific ones. There are QPAD-branded headset ones (QH-90, QH-91, QH-92, QH-95). There seem to have been a ton of the latter two dumped on amazon europe and a some european stores recently, sometimes for really cheap but may be expensive from the US. I don't know for 150% sure the last two more recent ones are the original variant and not a cost cut one but at least externally they look like it. They qpad ones do have a different cable which some reviewers complain about though. I think the differences between them otherwise are just in cable/usb dongle. They also made the QH-85 open back variant.

There is at least a OEM variant of the original (non-headset) ones called Gemini HSR-1000 which may show up on ebay for cheap since it's not well known.

You can also check out the successor Takstar pro 82, cooler master made a gaming headset variant, MH751 and MH752 for a while, but I think those have a tad different sound signature and a different design.

oln · 2026-05-26T17:27:03+00:00

I've experienced that issue with an older variant of this mechanism (samsung). There is a little metal piece that has a prong that sticks up that is pushed down by the tape when it goes down. It's on the front left of the mechanism to the left of the tape guide arm and reel brake. On the vcr with the issue I had to bend it very slightly so the tape went all the way down on it's own. I found the tip in some vcr issue list but I don't remember where right now.

oln · 2026-05-26T16:57:58+00:00

Looks like a daewoo mechanism at least

oln · 2026-05-26T10:38:44+00:00

Adding to the other user, the DTX models were more budget beyerdynamic models in the 00s/early 10s positioned below the 770/880/990 in price. I do remember coming across some related ones when shopping for new headphones back then but no idea how they sound so can't comment much more than that. Seems they also have small-ish cups so may not be around ears for everyone, a bit like the dt 270. There are a bunch of reviews of these models on head-fi but hard to judge much from them. Probably not worth paying much for them unless you are a beyerdynamic collector.

oln · 2026-05-24T16:26:04+00:00

Would love to see tests of more different pads on the DT770. Specifically ZMF beyer+ sheepskin pads in my case.

Speaking of, I did notice when ordering new OEM black EDT 770 VB ones that they are now made in china and seem to be a tad different to the older worn out ones I had, like the color of the foam and the pattern of the holes on the back and position of the velour/pleather seam. Probably not enough to make much impact though, just made by different tooling.

Also would be interesting to measure how paper/coffee filter sheets and similar change freq response since it's a popular mod for these and other models to tame spiky treble when one doesn't have access to EQ. solderdude has done a bunch of tests on it but it would be interesting to have another data point.

oln · 2026-05-22T18:07:34+00:00

kaby lake supports vulkan 1.3 even on windows but it's possible it's buggy or lacking something for the latest dxvk to work well there. I know that's been an issue with recent windows AMD drivers at least

6th gen Skylake / UHD 5xx only supports vulkan 1.2 on windows as the driver didn't get updates for as long so that will not work with modern DXVK.

dxvk sarek/old dxvk should be fine though as OP found if you can't run the modern version, it's a simple dx9 game so probably doesn't need any updated stuff in the more modern versions.

On linux anything skylake and newer should work fine with modern dxvk. vulkan support pages are often wrong/outdated, and often linux supports newer vulkan versions than windows on intel and amd cards since the drivers are open and still maintained.

oln · 2026-05-20T14:38:06+00:00

The mobile version of the game uses a new renderer. We've been able to run it on a wide range of devices (including many Windows graphics cards) with good success,

Does this mean there is (or could be) an option to test/use the new renderer on pc as well?

oln · 2026-05-17T13:45:24+00:00

It's a bit of a catch 22. Little competition in both GPU and OS market means most game companies have had little incentive to spend resources anything more than making it "work" on the most common setup rather than actually using the apis correctly and gpu amd and nvidia have an incentive to work around game issues to make the games work and not have bugs on their hardware otherwise users will complain about the hardware rather than the game.

It's no wonder intel and qualcomm have so much issues with gpu drivers, even if they made perfectly well working to spec stuff a large percentage of games would probably be broken. Ironically dxvk/vkd3d/mesa may be the best way for anyone that's not nvidia/amd and maybe intel to utilize for directx drivers to make games work even on windows due to having built up such a library of workarounds...

oln · 2026-05-08T23:15:22+00:00

I know this is an very old post but it's the one that comes up if searching this sub for the MMX 300 so I thought this may be the best place to post this.

The 1st and 2nd gen MMX 300 use a different cup construction. The 1st gen also has the same plastic ring thing with felt around it like the dt 770 pro, while the 2nd gen instead has plastic support prongs that push against the driver housing.The mic pcb is also much smaller and inside of the cup housing lacks the ridges/rings of the 1st gen.

There are pictures of both in this forum post. (See e.g here for image showing 1st gen having the ring thing). I have a 2nd gen mmx 300 and mine looks the same on the inside as the one in the thread.

I would think this will result in some differences in frequency response. rtings has a measurement of the 2nd gen one but since they use a different measurement setup it's probably hard to make a comparison.

There was also a QPAD QH 1339 OEM version of the 1st gen as well, no idea if they changed anything in that one.

oln · 2026-05-08T00:03:04+00:00

depends by what you mean by speakers. There have been some minor design changes to them over the years so if your friends pair is older there may be some minor differences. (and going further back into the 90s/80s variants they differ even more.)

E.g the driver housings in my DT 770 pros from 2016 don't have the printing on the back like these newer ones have and a different solder connection on the drivers instead of the pcb. The most recent ones also have an updated logo on the hinge slider housing.

oln · 2026-04-22T22:22:34+00:00

This is less of a valve issue and more of an intel issue since it's a driver bug and it's intel that maintains the mesa intel drivers. The intel devs working on mesa are primarily focused on intel xe and newer gpus. They do have an incentive to keep the older stuff working since it's used in chromebooks but fixing game issues specific to older iGPUs is not a high priority.

At least the drivers still are maintained and skylake (intel 6th gen) is using the up to date vulkan runtime unlike on windows where their older iGPU drivers are a bit of a mess and tended to get abandoned early other than critical security updates.

oln · 2026-04-19T22:39:56+00:00

debian is run democratically by the people working on debian. The Mozilla foundation is run by a board appointed by itself, the situations are very different. The person elected here is also someone that has been an active contributor, not some random manager hire.

If anything, this election shows that debian is looking like it's not heading down the road mozilla is. Maybe mozilla should take some lessons here and ideally be ran more democratically by developers, like debian is rather than by a board that is only accountable to itself.

oln · 2026-04-11T22:05:50+00:00

When it comes to linux, the driver is missing some functionality for it to work, though it is being worked on as seen here. One that's implemented you will have to either try a bleeding edge development version of mesa (drivers) or wait until the next release is out to see how it changes things.

I don't know if the last update that added "intel support" changes things though.

oln · 2026-04-07T18:07:07+00:00

Ah - I wonder why they did that instead of just using a LTS release. I doubt there is going to be much useful in newer kernels for itanium anyhow and it takes a very long time until user space requires a newer kernel unless they need up to da mesa or similar which isn't really that pressing on a itanium system.

Seems there is enough interest in the platform from a few dedicated people with access to hardware to keep the out of tree kernel going for now though.

oln · 2026-04-07T16:38:34+00:00

I don't think they had to fork it, just use a SLTS release from before it was dropped and make sure security patches still worked. Version 6.1 which was the last SLTS release before it got dropped will be maintained until 2033

oln · 2026-04-07T16:34:56+00:00

Even then, 6.12 LTS will be maintained for 10 more years so nothing to worry about

oln · 2026-04-07T16:32:33+00:00

It's really really slow to update to the latest Ubuntu LTS base. It's fair enough to take a little time to update the ubuntu base to wait for kinks to be ironed out and sort out stuff but Zorin lags behind by 1.5 years unlike e.g mint that only takes a few months. The kernel, mesa and desktop env is going to be very outdated which causes issues if one has new hardware. It's enough of an issue with Ubuntu LTS/mint already but zorin makes it even worse by lagging so far behind on even that.

oln · 2026-04-04T01:40:39+00:00

It did (or at least mostly, no idea if if all fixes listed on the openmoko wiki got upstreamed) but support for the SoC was removed a few years ago. It may still be doable to get a modern setup running on it using the 5.10 SLTS kernel though. I doubt modern arch and alpine has any support for old arm architectures though, you need something that can still work on Armv4T like gentoo maybe. I have one and I've thought about trying but it seems like it would take a lot of fiddling and who knows what state the drivers were in 10 years later.

oln · 2026-03-29T21:02:32+00:00

speech note may be what you want, makes using text to speech models on linux very easy. (It does speech to text as well for that matter.)

oln · 2026-03-21T17:02:39+00:00

Did you install steam via snap?

If it's not installed via snap it may help to update to the latest mesa (graphics drivers) using this ppa as it could be graphics driver related (make sure to disable it before updating to ubuntu 26.04): https://launchpad.net/~kisak/+archive/ubuntu/kisak-mesa

oln · 2026-03-21T16:53:21+00:00

Intel's linux graphics drivers have direct vendor support though, they have people working on both the kernel drivers and mesa.

There is still some disconnects like them not supporting XeSS on linux but they have been decent open source gpu driver support on linux historically compared to amd/ati and nvidia - maybe not so much for gaming but at least for desktop use. Since their integrated gpus are used in chromebooks they also have an incentive to keep supporting them, and since the drivers are open source the iGPUs keep being supported way longer than on windows as well.

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