In the late 70's a new driver technology for headphones was put out into the wild, orthodynamic drivers had arrived on the market. Different then the standard moving-coil for headphones, orthodynamic cans offer a unique sound like that of electrostatic headphones, only at a much cheaper price and a much lower power requirement.
The technology works with having a diaphragm made of conductive wire smashed between two magnetic polarities. Run electricity through it and the diaphragm vibrates creating the sound
What makes the unique orthodynamics special in their design is how they don't have resistance moving air both ways. Unlike a moving-coil which has to move the weight of the whole driver back and forth to create sound. More can be read on the advantages at the extremely long power thread over on
Head-fi.org (the greatest resource for headphones on the web) entitled "
Orthodynamic Roundup"
I am a lucky owner of a pair of Yamaha YH-3 Orthodynamic headphones that my dad has passed onto me. They are amongst my favorite sounding of the several I own. While I was blown away with their sound when properly amplified, this isn't the reason why they stand out from my other cans. They are durable as hell. There really is no other way of putting how amazing these headphones are when it comes to their strength and durability. Years of storage from moving, the headphones sat uncared for in boxes, causing one of the cups to break off, and the wires to get semi-damaged. They worked right when I plugged them in, and I fixed the issues soon after. What makes this quite remarkable is from all sorts of moving and abusing, they still worked. Even while repairing them the driver was solid, and didn't feel as if it was going to break (unlike work on a pair of abused Senn HD414 headphones where one driver brake when removing it from the headphone). What I am getting at here is not only do they sound clean and accurate, but they are durable. Most Orthodynamic headphones also can tolerate ludicrous amounts of power, which is good for those who fear driving too much juice into their earphones and blowing them out. Durability truly is something important for a good amount of people who work in industries where a good set of headphones is important.
Unfortunately the orthodynamic design left just as quickly as it came in. Companies who started making the phones left them quite quickly (a span of only a few years). There really isn't one thing that cause this, no one really knows why. Perhaps it was the different design coupled with inexperienced manufactures (and thus bad quality control), or just favoritism for what had been around for ages, a tried and tested technology that had been in use for ages and known to work. This doesn't mean they are gone all together though, a few companies (most notable Fostex) still use them in their headphones, but are arguably not as good as they were in their hayday. You can pick up a pair of the latest Fostex phones which implements Orthodynamic drivers called the
Fostex RP T40RP over at Amazon.com
.
