Special thanks to Brian for humoring our request and sending us not one but three Capra Comfort Straps for this review. your support is greatly appreciated.
Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. You spent more money on your headphones than a reasonable person spends on a used car, and yet – after about an hour – your head feels like it’s being slowly clamped in a vice operated by a very patient torturer.
The audiophile hobby is full of beautiful contradictions, and “paying $1,500 for something that hurts you” is arguably the strangest of them all. Enter Brian at Capra Audio, a one-person operation with a 3D printer, a deep love of headphones, and what appears to be a personal grudge against uncomfortable headbands.
The Capra Comfort Strap is deceptively simple. It’s a strip of TPU mesh – that’s thermoplastic polyurethane for those of you who like knowing what your accessories are made of – shaped into a gentle arc and terminated at each end with little plastic clips.
It doesn’t look like much, but slap it on your headphones, and it transforms the experience in a way that will make you feel mildly embarrassed that no headphone manufacturer thought of this first.
Actually, to be fair, the idea of a comfort strap isn’t new – companies like ZMF and Meze have been using them for years – but the way Capra has democratised it absolutely is.
The science of the springy bit
The key to the Capra Comfort Strap is in the construction. Unlike traditional compression headbands, the TPU mesh construction offers “a soft, trampoline-like suspension that flexes with your movements, reducing pressure points and preventing discomfort during extended wear”.
What that means in practice is that instead of your headband sitting directly on your skull like a crown of inconvenience, the mesh creates a suspension layer: your head floats slightly beneath the headband proper, weight distributed across a wider area, hotspots reduced to a distant memory.
It’s the same principle used by expensive gaming headsets that charge you three times the price, except here you’re getting it for somewhere between $20 and $25, and you don’t have to look at RGB lighting.
The TPU mesh material, which feels very well made and strong, strikes a smart balance: soft, but not saggy; springy, but not tight. It adapts to the contours of your head while maintaining steady tension, so your headphones stay put. And unlike foams or fabrics that break down over time, it’s built to last.
It won’t stretch out, flatten, or fray, even after months of daily use. The fact that it’s 3D printed also means it’s quite tough, being an open mesh stops sweat build up, and is easy to install to headphones.
The TPU won’t crack, flake, or peel the way leather headband padding inevitably does, meaning it’ll outlast whatever degrading fate normally awaits your stock headband.
A strap for all seasons
One of the most interesting things about the Capra Comfort Strap, to me, is that it’s not just ‘one’ strap. Brian makes versions for many popular headphones, and if yours isn’t listed, he’ll work with you to make you one.
For the purpose of this review, I wanted to try the Comfort Strap on my three primary headphones: Sennheiser’s HD800S, Sony’s MDR-Z1R, and Fostex’s TH-X00.
Starting with the Sennheiser, HD800S is one of those headphones where the community is perpetually at war with itself over comfort. Half of Head-Fi will tell you it’s a featherweight marvel that you forget you’re wearing.
The other half will tell you that the stock pads are almost non-existent and the headband padding is pretty stiff, and their head hurts after a while with the stock headband.
Both camps are technically correct, because headphone comfort is deeply personal, and also because the HD800S headband pad is, objectively, a thing of minimal cushioning ambition.
The Capra strap for HD800 is actually compatible with the whole family of these headphones: HD800, HD800S, HD820, and HD8xx. Because of Sennheiser’s funky headband design, though, installing it is where things get a little more theatrical than with other headphones, so much so that Capra has seen fit to give the HD800 its very own dedicated installation video:
I received V2 of the HD800 strap (apparently there was an older, discontinued design). As you may have seen in the video above, to install it, you’ll need to remove the stock headband padding, work with the headband’s internal structure, and generally commit a little more time and patience than you would with, say, any other headphone on the planet.
Think of it as a puzzle where the prize is no longer feeling like your $1,800 spaceship headphone is slowly integrating with your skull.
On a serious note, once installed, the transformation is real. The suspension layer turns what some users describe as “a stiff and indifferent headband” into something that actually seems to give a small part of itself in acknowledgment of your head’s existence.
My only gripe, I guess, is that it makes the original headband, complete with its ‘padding’ clip-on, a lot less pretty, but if you can look past the looks, you may agree with me that it’s one of the best upgrades for this classic headphone ever made.
Installing the Capra Comfort Strap on the other two headphones was, thankfully, far less cumbersome, but the change in comfort was no less dramatic. In fact, I actually feel it’s even more of an upgrade to the Sony and Fostex designs than it is to the HD800 – which I actually find very comfortable in its native state.
Starting with the Sony, this is probably my all-time favourite headphone (along with HD800S), and easily the most luxurious, stylish headphone I’ve personally seen and owned.
While not very heavy at 385 grams, it’s fairly bulky, and the thin headband is designed in a way that puts maximum pressure on a narrow band of your skull. It’s also covered in ultra-thin sheepskin leather that, without careful treatment, will crack and degrade over time, leaving you with an ugly remnant in what is an otherwise magnificent headphone.
Prior to getting the Capra strap, I used a third-part headband cover to protect the sensitive leather bits. I’ve kept this cover on, again mostly to protect the leather from the elements, but for most people the strap makes this redundant.
Unlike the HD800S, the Capra strap easily fits onto the Z1R’s headband arc with two pressure clips on either side, and literally installs in five seconds flat. Once installed, it immediately addresses that flaking headband problem both by protecting the stock padding from direct contact wear and by redistributing the weight through its mesh suspension.
Any hint of discomfort or ‘hot spots’ from the original headband is gone, replaced with what now feels like a better balanced, better fitting headphone I can wear for hours without fatigue.
The same experience extends to the TH-X00, that beloved Massdrop-era Fostex collaboration with its beautiful wooden cups and wonderfully punchy low-end.
This is yet another headphone that gets away with its comfort shortcomings largely because of its relatively low weight, but it has similar issues to the Sony in that its thin headband quickly degrades over time (especially since it’s made with protein leather instead of the real thing).
Using Capra’s Fostex/Denon strap, which slots easily and perfectly onto the metal extenders on the headband, the suspension mesh takes over headband duty entirely. The pleather underneath is spared from further suffering, and instantly transforms my guilty-pleasure into a headphone I can wear for hours.
Combined with a pad swap (Brainwavz Large Sheepskin pads, thank me later), this is now my most comfortable headphone, which in the company of the Sennheiser and Sony, is both unexpected and most welcome.
Closing thoughts
For $20–$25, about the same price you’d pay for a cheap set of IEM tips, the Capra Audio Comfort Strap is the kind of purchase that genuinely feels like a cheat code. Nothing I’ve ever bought for my trio of headphones – not even designer cables costing hundreds of dollars – has made them feel more inviting to use than this humble plastic accessory.
The only complaint I’ve read about is that it requires a little room left over in your headband’s vertical adjustment, so if you already max out your headphone’s height adjustment, adding the strap will make them feel smaller, and possibly too small for some giant noggins.
That, and the fiddly HD800S installation, which demands a mildly more committed relationship with your headphones than most people are used to.
But honestly? Any headphone worth spending the sort of money us crazies spend on our prized audio gear deserves five minutes of your undivided attention and a YouTube tutorial. With his ingenious 3D-printed creation, Brian is really and truly doing the lord’s work for us headphone lovers, one trampoline mesh at a time.
Highly, HIGHLY recommended.
You can purchase your own Capra Comfort Strap directly from Brian here. I’ve also seen them selling on Amazon.com and other platforms.
