My name is Whitney Dafoe. My goal is to make your headphones sound better: specifically, planar magnetic or orthodynamic headphones (old school hobbyists call them “orthos”).  I like to think of myself as a "sound sculptor", shaping the sound of headphones to a vision I have of what they could sound like.
 
I’ve always been passionate about what I do, whether it is travel, cooking, gardening, photography, art, activism, music, audio, and more. Ever since I was a child, I have been driven to make things better and more beautiful and share those creations with the world. I have spent a lot of time traveling around this country with my camera photographing people, homes, landscapes and American life and culture. I have been to all 50 states, most more than once (or many more times) in all my road trips across the country and I have travelled to many countries around the world. Most recently I spent 8 months studying Buddhism in India.  If you want to learn more about me, check out my photography website: www.whitneydafoe.com. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! 

I have had a long love affair with planar magnetic headphones. I spent years trying nearly every electromagnetic driver based headphone (the most common driver type) on the market and trying to like them, but always being bothered by their sound. I always heard acoustic artifacts in the headphones and drivers that distracted me from the music I was trying to fall into and let take me away - you know the feeling - when you are lost in music and the world around you disappears. When I discovered orthos I was immediately drawn to them because of what I heard in their driver's potential for extremely linear frequency response, lack of resonance, super low distortion, fast transients, and speed, which enables them to have incredible detail retrieval and resolution. What I heard at that time wasn’t perfect, but I heard the potential for something that I thought might let the headphones get out of the way, disappearing so I could completely fall into my music. That has been my goal ever since.
 
The problem is that orthos have never been designed with an enclosure or acoustics that let the divers operate at their full potential - the acoustic environment the drivers were put into was often ill considered to the point of making good drivers unlistenable. 

The technology was actually first implemented in headphones in the late 70’s in England by Wharfedale using very rough materials including flexible fridge magnets. Other companies namely Yamaha and Fostex soon saw the incredible potential in this driver technology and made full lineups of ortho headphones, but could never really figure out the acoustics and it was never a financial success. Orthos were abandoned in the late 80’s despite the drivers actually being very good especially for that time - much better than the electromagnetic drivers being developed then.  I modify some Yamaha orthos from the late 70’s to great results, but the stock sound as they were released in the 70’s to early 80 is truly awful. 

There has been a resurgence in ortho driver based headphones in the last 2 decades thanks to hobbyists creating a culture of modifying these vintage orthos and some modern companies seeing this and catching onto the potential and making new models in about 2010. But despite some noticeable leaps in the materials used in ortho driver technology, most modern orthos still have problems due to a continued lack of understanding of how to implement these drivers in an acoustic environment that lets the drivers perform to their full potential. All modern planar magnetic headphones, even the most expensive models I have heard, are limited in their sound and performance by poor acoustics. 

This simultaneous incredible potential I heard in the technology combined with frustration at the design choices being made set me off on my modding journey years ago. I have been improving planar magnetic headphones by modifying them since about 2007, a couple years before Audeze and Hifiman brought orthos back into the modern world. I have since become obsessed with making the vision I have for how orthos could sound a reality and made a huge mental, emotional and financial commitment to it. If you have ever visited me, you will know about the rooms full of tools, modification materials, ear pads and prototype headphones (as well as the A/B tests you will be subjected to.)

One of the challenges of ortho drivers is that the diaphragm moves forward and backward equally, so they put out the same sound wave from the front of the driver (the ‘frontwave’) as they do from the back of the driver (the ‘backwave’). However, the sound waves making up the backwave are inverted, so if they mix with the frontwave, the opposing waves will cancel each other out, canceling out bass and creating an acoustic nightmare.

This issue occurs most commonly when the backwave circles around the side of the driver but it can also happen when the backwave reflects off the rear enclosure, causing it to hit the diaphragm and change how it moves. Imagine waves in the ocean colliding, and the resultant chaos that ensues. Instead of clean, beautiful rows of waves rolling into the beach you see tumultuous splashes of upheaving water. Open-back orthos can partially mitigate this issue by simply venting the backwave, but everything behind the driver changes how the backwave interacts with the driver and hence it’s response as well. The materials in front of the driver directly affect the front-wave, including the earpads themselves, so if not properly designed, even open-back orthos can have serious acoustic problems that destroy the potential of the driver’s response.

I have spent nearly 2 decades working to fine-tune the interaction between the front and back-wave of planar magnetic drivers in order to solve this engineering dilemma, and in this relentless pursuit have employed almost every material and method imaginable. Many of the techniques I use have never been implemented in any orthodynamic before.

My process of modifying orthos follows several principles. Firstly, I aim to maximize the driver’s speed, so that the listener isn’t hearing a diaphragm that is literally flopping around loose, unable to match the signal it is receiving (an all-too-common pitfall of orthos). Secondly, I work on tuning the frequency response as close to neutral as possible while eliminating any unwanted resonances. My goal is a headphone that has pristine and lifelike vocals, deep and extended bass, clean, airy treble and a flat frequency response from top to bottom. Ultimately my goal is to make headphones that don’t sound like anything at all, so that all you hear is music.

Unlike many designers, I modify headphones using nothing but music and my ears, This is quite unique in the headphone world these days, where everyone seems to have a measurement rig they depend on for modifying headphones. These measurements are important for development of a well performing driver, but the acoustic implementation cannot simply be measured, it requires human ears. I trust my own hearing, and use no measurements or even test tones of any kind; Just my ears and music. I believe that if it sounds right, it is right.

All of my headphones are made in a slow, careful process that is accomplished entirely by hand. My headphones are works of art, if you own a pair of headphones that I have modified, you will be experiencing the best possible sound that driver is capable of. My modded headphones are completely transformed versions of the original stock headphones I start with.

Join me on my Discord server for rhythmdevils audio, where there is a community of enthusiasts for all things ortho and forums for all of my modded orthos. It's a great place to get to know more about orthos, my modifications, associated gear and meet other people with similar passions and interests.

Contact me with any questions or fill out my waiting list form to join the waiting list for a pair of my custom, hand-made headphones.