Sennheiser PC37X randomly goes bad after disconnecting the cable ?
Greetings, Yesterday I was using my headset like normal with my macbook, just listening to music and on a call with people like usual, and the headset was perfectly fine. The stock wire that came with the headset is extremely long and yesterday it annoyed me very much that it kept getting tangled with itself, so I decided to see if the cable is replaceable. I pulled out the cable from the headset and saw the adapter, and looked online for a replacement. Upon plugging it back in, the audio sounded extremely muffled and washed out. Im not sure what I did wrong to make it mess up like that as I've always taken good care of it, ive had it for about 2 years and its always just been chilling on my desk, but anywho I thought the cable just went bad and ordered a replacement. The replacement came, and the issue is still persistant, so I am not sure what the issue is I've tried multiple different headsets and the issue is not with the port, and I also tried it with my windows laptop and...
Apr 23, 2024
The sound quality of these headphones is incredible when paired with my newly purchased O2 Amp. I have a bit of an unusual setup because I connected my Amp to my Xonar DX soundcard instead of buying an external DAC. The sound remains clean and clear with no interference whatsoever.
I also own the HD 598 headphones (Ivory color) which are also open back and I think I've hit the limit in what I'm willing to invest in audio equipment because there's little to no difference in the overall sound quality between the HD 6XX. Sure, there's some extra power felt in some scenarios but when you notice a difference, it's NOT worth the extra cost compared to the HD 598. DO NOT buy if you have the HD 598 or 518 or 558
This is as far as I will invest in headphones or audio in general because I've hit diminishing returns. I Absolutely LOVE these headphones and will never replace them unless they break
I've mostly used cheap headphones. When I bought the first somewhat decent headphone, The Roccat Kave (The original 5.1 version), I was blown away by the jump in sound quality. When I later read some reviews for them, quite a few people felt that it sacrificed sound quality for the surround effect.
I decided that I would invest a bit more in audio to see if there would be any change in sound quality. I bought the Sennheiser HD 598 because of the insanely positive reviews and again I noticed a decent jump in quality, I lost the surround effect but was amazed by all the extra details I detected in all my usual songs and games. The open back design made me feel that the sound was not coming from the headphone but from further away. The 598 was THE MOST comfortable headphone I've ever used.
After that I bought the HD 6XX and noticed that they are less comfortable than my HD 598 and don't provide and meaningful jump in quality to justify the extra cost.
That higher model number and higher cost got me not superiority, but something that fit better the mold of my preferences. Once we reach a certain threshold, it's difficult to hear the difference in sound quality, which is in my opinion objective to a certain extent, but subjective for the most part. There is a wall that exceeds our ear and brain's capabilities, and (fortunately) the price is less than $1000 in my experience. Over that wall, that's where audiophiles climb and start imagining things, getting poetic, and they start using esoteric terms and otherworldly logic.
So after realizing that I liked the T90 more not because they sounded better than the DT 990, but because their sound signature, although still exceedingly and unnaturally sharp to my ears, was more tolerable, I decided to "downgrade" and got the DT 880. Instantly, I liked them more than the T90. I was like, "THESE are the better, superior-sounding headphones if there was such a thing. Man, ah, this is so much more tolerable and doesn't sound technically worse than the T90, just different. These hit the spot. I wanna hug them."
So yeah, I was going to eventually get the HD 6XX out of curiosity, but after reading you and seeing that I'm on your same wavelength, I'll probably skip them if they're not better than the HD 598, but different. I gifted my HD 598 SE to a friend because I wanted more highs, even though everything else sounded acoustic and real. All my three Beyers have a metallic, bright sound signature, and way too much highs and not enough of the muddy mid-lows and mids. In my opinion, a little muddyness from the mids down to the mid-lows is OK, because that's how real-life sounds.
You know what combination I'd like? The T90's airiness and space, the DT 990's lows, the DT 880's highs, and the HD 598's muddy mid-lows and mids...but keeping the smooth, realistic tonality of the Sennheisers (versus the bright, metallic tonality of the Beyers). Those would be my ideal fun headphones.
I'm not an audiophile in the sense of the psychological disease that attaches the big ego of people to their bigger wallets in search of a non-existent audio nirvana, but I do care about sound more than what is deemed normal. I consider myself to have higher polished ears than the average person, because I've been involved in sound producing and engineering for 16 years. It's a fact that working with EQs and compressors and other sound shaping tools polishes the ear and trains the brain to notice subtleties and nuances, which translates in music enjoyment to noticing the difference in sound textures between different headphones. It find it highly rewarding when headphones let me hear deeper into the music, and if not deeper, then differently. But I keep it real, because the closest thing to the audio nirvana that audiophiles seek is attained during the mixing stage, not during music consumption with obscenely expensive gear. In that mixing stage the overall sound is still manipulable because every single track and sound shaping tool is still available to be freely adjusted. Then the final stage is mastering, which is when the entire music track is "fairy dusted", nuanced, and receives its final compression and limiting to get the final overall volume and dynamic character.
Once the mastering is completed, that's the music tracks' birth. So audiophiles want a perfect baby, when the baby was already formed by the mixing and mastering engineer. Knowing all this, I buy headphones being conscious that there is a point where there won't be more to be had, and again, it can be reached below the $1000 mark in my experience.
Any capable sound engineer can capture and preserve the maximum retrievable detail. All nuances and subtleties will be there. How it's presented depends on the equipment. There is good and bad equipment, and that is objective until a certain point, which is subjective. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder.
Why? Because the brain and ear threshold of perceivable objective quality is lower than people believe, and after it's crossed, it's all subjetive. Companies will not reveal. How will they make more money?
A hoopty Toyota Tercel takes you places as effectively as a Lamborghini Huracan Performante. Which is the better car? Better at what? At their main purpose, the Tercel meets the threshold and the Huracan exceeds it...on a subjective level. But objectively, no one is better at taking you from point A to point B. See how consumerism enslaves mankind? Same with headphone companies. I buy headphones for the difference in audio presentation, not superiority, because not only I consume music, but I produce it. But most people don't. So they want to reach stars that do not exist.
Higher-end equipment objectively sounds different, and subjectively sounds "better"...but contrary to the diseased audiophile psychology, it will not reveal what is not there. The capable engineer had the superior aural experience when crafting the tracks. No amount of expensive gear will rival or surpass that experience in the studio. It's impossible! 😀
Listen carefully with them and you'll hear their superiority versus the other ones. It's just not evident unless you know what to look for. The difference is there once you learn them. What I wrote is true from my sound engineer viewpoint, but my likes and tastes are subjective. I'm here on Massdrop browsing just like you and everyone else. My knowledge doesn't deter me to enjoy, but makes me a smart shopper and inmune to company marketing.
Two months ago, I gifted my Superlux HD-668B to a brother in my local church, where I'm the soundguy. He asked me about good headphones, because he wanted to buy some Bose headphones, and I felt bad and gave him my mint Superlux headphones for free. He loved them and praised them. I saved him money and taught him about how branding and marketing works and how people are programmed to hear what is not there.
Thee Superlux are $38, but are one of my favorite headphones and I can hear everything through them. Yeah, they have piercing highs and recessed mids, and the sound quality and transparency is not as good as better cans, but the 3D image is good and the bass is fun. I like them more than my $300 Audio-Technica ATH-M70x.
In all seriousness, I can spend $5,000 on headphones if I want to, but why? My brain cannot be tricked. Knowledge is like an anti-virus. A program cannot execute in an environment that is safeguarded against it. Enjoy your music through your headphones and delight in the nuances. Don't worry about anything. God bless you, friend!
I don't know what to recommend to you, but if you could endure about an hour on the closed-back DT 770s, which I haven't used, then I'd conclude that you have high tolerance for bright headphones and would not enjoy duller headphones like the lower-end Sennheisers. I don't think you'd enjoy them. I gifted away my HD 598 SE because although sounding realistic and 3D, they were too dull for me. If they had sharper highs, I would've kept them because my Beyers don't have that type of sound presentation. What sound do you want from headphones? What are you seeking exactly compared to the DT 770?