Hard to find any info online about how worn out pads affect these headphones, so here's what I noticed when I replaced my earpads after a full year of several hours a day usage. I should've replaced them a few months ago when I started noticing issues, but I'm poor, they're like $60, and I didn't know the warranty would cover replacement pads until I asked DCA about it.
I've A/Bd my new and old pads a few times and here's all the differences I noticed. My ears aren't really trained for being able to pick out what frequencies are causing problems, I can only describe issues with some of the technicalities and tonal balance.
Worn out pads issues:
- Smaller soundstage. It slowly got that way over time, this issue didn't stand out to me until it got pretty bad
- Less precise imaging - sort of a "5-blob effect" where there's hotspots in the soundstage around panned left, mid-left, center, mid-right, and panned right, rather than instruments being placed evenly between those 5 points.
- Treble overall feels a bit less sharp, especially mid-to-upper treble. This and the imaging issue are possibly related?
- Bass reduction. I had to turn my bass shelf down by about 2 dB when I got new pads.
- Mids change shape in a weird way. This is what eventually drove me to ask DCA about it, synths and guitars just weren't shaped "correctly" anymore and it was a constant frustration.
Other things I noticed with new earpads that I didn't necessarily notice as "issues" on the old pads:
- Extremely clear reverb trails again. I loved this about these headphones when I got them but eventually the pad wear made reverb much less clear, though I never noticed. New pads brought it back.
- Better bass intangibles. Like I mentioned before I had to turn my bass shelf down by 2dB to get it back to the same level, but kick drums in particular feels a bit more precise and impactful somehow.
- More depth to the soundstage. My possibly BS crackpot uneducated theory is that it's related to the better treble clarity/imaging, where the upper harmonics of instruments feel more correctly placed "in front" of the fundamentals creating a better illusion of depth, whereas the placement of the treble was getting a bit fuzzy on the old pads and ruining the illusion.
Hope this helps someone else decide if they need new pads or not. I had heard before that pad wear is really bad for DCA headphones, but I still wasn't expecting there to be such a huge difference. I definitely won't be waiting as long when these start to wear out.