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
I am not implying that you are trying to save money with the connector. I am saying that you have apparently "selected" an interface that is what specified by USB-IF consortium for essentially small light cell phones, not 2 or 3 pounds immobile desktop units. The very small and somewhat sensitive female connector is going to be worked, stressed and fatigued, it is not robust.
What concerns me is 2 things: 1. Your ODM ( manufacturer ) is doing your layout design and probably the passive and active component selection. Which means you are ignoring these signal integrity issues that will present themselves when you meet production (I do not mean the hand pick and probably hand built eval boards given out to INDIVIDUALS to be reviewed.) 2. For a $350 product you have eliminated the entire market of higher grade USB (non micro, non mini) cables that is available. Before you go off on "Those are expensive and unnecessary" I am using a very robust nice PYST USB cable from Schitt available at $20.
3. It is a crappy interface. Plain and simple. Where ever there is a physical interface it becomes an analog issue. Meaning a signal making contact at the interface, but poorly, is going to wreak more havoc in the signal path. It is not a simple digital issue, it works or it does not.
BTW, using individuals to review your products sickens me. For one thing they are not accountable and make comments like this: Worth noting: the USB connection is a microUSB rather than the standard full-size connection we normally see on desktop DACs. This has to do with size (the RDAC is not very tall) but also longevity... microUSB supposedly has a greater operation lifetime than its full-size counterparts, and USB C is not ubiquitous enough to be a good fit here. I thought this was weird and sort of annoying when I first encountered it. Now I'm used to it and don't think it's a big deal.
Nothing against the individual, it sounds like he has been misled. You want us to believe you cannot fit a USB 2.0 male B connector in your design, gee the Schitt Bitfrost is 6.75" to your 8.1" and they seem to manage it. And where the hell did the "greater operation lifetime" idea come from? Good god anyone even without back-end QA experience can look at a USB B interface vs a USB micro interface and see where you are going to have problems. Unfortunately, some of your customers have a lot of experience in these matters. Manufacturing, design, sales, marketing, Hardware consortium (USB-IF) and committees (IEEE), semi-conductor, FPGA's, ODMs, and the nefarious dealings of Shenzen and the like.....
I am smelling a lot of BS and snake oil. You are not containing your marketing, its too aggressive and short sited. You are going to piss off those in the "know" first, and others later. MD will become "New audiophile hobbyist beware" I had higher hopes with you all. MD could have really stretched out the point of diminishing returns on the cost vs performance curve.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was-mini-usb-deprecated-in-favor-of-micro-usb
I very much do do not want a unit that relies on a port that WILL break or detach from board when taking lateral stress. USB-B connectors typically have larger (more solid) connection points to the board and enclosure.
What experience are you basing your comment on bigger is not better comment? Not the article you point us to, that is evaluation between mini and micro. Not straight USB.
Once again, what experience are you basing your comment on? Plain old USB is a solid interface. The reason it was changed was because the desire to move to smaller platforms. I was at Intel in the mid 90's, Andy Grove and co. saw the future back then, and knew uP's where moving to smaller platforms, and subsequent changes needed to be made to all their interfaces. RJ-45 has never been changed because there has not been a reason in Ethernet.
Once again, what experience are you basing your comment on?
I am really tired of folks like yourself misleading people. The folks on this board are mostly non Audiophiles maybe becoming Audiophiles. They are going to give up, it is upsetting. Maybe your intentions are good. Please explain yourself.
Suffice it to say that there are times to consider an aftermarket cable and others where you should not. And yes, I'm well versed in the difference between them. And yes, I am unapologetic when it comes to the difference; there is an entire industry around selling gullible people snake oil here. Believe me or not, your call, but I speak from a position of empirical knowledge and confidence in what I am saying few can match.
Analog audio is one place where a studio quality cable is justified. Notice that I take care in my choice of words: studio quality means Blue Jeans Cables. Not hundreds of dollars. The difference this makes is by far the highest for the lowest level signals, so in decreasing order of importance: phono, source to pre, pre to amp, and speaker cables. This is only for analog signals.
In contrast, USB cables for DACs do not require esoteric or upgraded cabling, full stop. If you feel better when your USB cables have stiff Techflex around them, maybe with some upgraded weights stuffed in or fancy colors, maybe with a magic black box in the middle, I've got bad news for you: what you're hearing is the placebo effect. The sound of that money leaving your wallet made more noise than any difference you'll ever hear. A USB ground isolator or -with some scepticism- a reclocker is the only thing that might have any relevance. Not the cable at all, unless it's a horribly out of spec knockoff.
So cables can be relevant, but not anywhere near as much as as a good R2R DAC. This thing can and should be connected with any solid, standards compliant version of a micro USB cable. Hopefully I made this clear, and honestly busting some of the cable snake oil makes this a much more accessible hobby than those who say you should invest anywhere near as much into cabling as the rest of the system. My cabling is probably under 1/25 the value of my system, and I do not suffer because of it - audibly or in terms of measurements.
Robustness is in fact built into the micro-USB jack spec, taking into effect a lot of past lessons learned - including from USB-B. It is not out of place on a desktop product; it's the best jack widely available save USB-C, and they didn't go with that one for reasons clearly stated. I've actually resoldered USB jacks (very fine work to do by hand), and these things have big ground lugs which also serve as structural support for the jack, never mind anything else.
It boggles my mind that anyone would be doing stuff which would repeatedly put severe orthogonal strain on the input jack of a valuable DAC, but even if you're one of those people, this jack is in the middle and would functionally be protected by the adjacent power and RCA jacks - not to mention the fact that the DAC should be relatively lightweight. I would venture that you could pick it up by the micro-USB.
My turn: Armchair experts opining without evidence about the supposed fragility of micro-USB should pony up actual evidence. I'll wait. Keep in mind lots of people said similar stuff without any evidence when Apple's Lightning connector was released, not to mention mini-DisplayPort, not to mention USB-C, and have been completely embarrassed since.
Also, realize the adjacent RCA, DC barrel, and possible additional digital inputs will all serve to protect this port even in the unlikely case you want to regularly abuse the back of your DAC.
This is honestly ridiculous.
There's your problem. Don't buy those.
One of the most common failure points on modern gear. You can dig that up yourself, or not. I'm just tired of having to dissect gear and re-flow crappy connectors into place. Use the right connector for the job.
Every USB cable that meets spec is going to be shielded. Some have wasted metal or sand (for real) in there to make you feel like it must be better - and this is depressingly effective. As you say yourself, 'heavier cables ... with several levels of shielding' - these are not at all better when it comes to USB. Sorry, intuition has led you astray.
Take apart the standard in physics and engineering labs sometime - a 75-ohm BNC cable. It's got a single thin layer of shielding, and the actual cable is going to look and feel very diminutive. These power our understanding of the universe, in labs that - if significant improvements could be made at ANY cost - they would have been long since. What I'm saying here, is weight has very little to no bearing on digital signal transmission.
Now if we're talking a 5 horsepower electric motor, you'd better look up the gauge of your wiring and spring for enough copper to handle that current. It'll be heavy by necessity. But for high frequency signal transmission, more copper is actually often not better.
I have done design, marketing and to this argument, product support and sales at semiconductor companies that sell into customers in the Computing and Network Equipment Manufacturer, also an FPGA company, probably the one this DAC is using. My customers buy in high volume, on the magnitude of tens of thousands units sold. At this volume you come across Everything, and I mean Everything. FPGAs and IC's have extreme sensitivities to power and ground noise, no matter what their literature indicates. When a problem hits a fortune 500 customer of your customer, and you come together to determine root cause, all pre-conceived notions such as:
In contrast, USB cables for DACs do not require esoteric or upgraded cabling, full stop.
GET THROWN OUT THE WINDOW. FULL STOP. Because noise can come from anywhere, and effect unknown sensitivities and can cause esoteric happenings.
These kind of all knowing statements are normally made by designers during the pre-meetings before meeting with the customer, or the customers customer. Then I along with senior management have to tell the designers to keep their mouth closed, and only answer what they are asked. They just do not have the experience. It takes years.
I have seen so many problems coming from so many different places. Remember, this is the input. Any disruption to the signal integrity at the beginning of the conversion amplification chain gets propagate through, and almost always in the signal integrity worsening. You can understand that theoretically.
So I have learned something thru all this experience:
The more I know, the more I realize how much I do not know. This is mature concept, I understand.
I have spent a lot of time researching Digital cables from empirical evidence volunteered by many many folks offered on Audiophile boards such as Audio Asylum. I also took an album I can listen to repeatedly, Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, and listened to it with a PYST, with a much more expensive borrowed one, and an Amazon one. Meaning listening to the album repeatedly, over a period of three months (it can be done probably only with the mysticism of Astral Weeks), PYST works for me. I go purely on enjoyment, and lack of listener fatigue.
But this is useless argument, that has been played out before. I am responding to your generalization of myself as:
If you feel better when your USB cables have stiff Techflex around them, maybe with some upgraded weights stuffed in or fancy colors, maybe with a magic black box in the middle, I've got bad news for you: what you're hearing is the placebo effect . The sound of that money leaving your wallet made more noise than any difference you'll ever hear .
No, I can handle $20. (Remember, I mentioned Schitt's PYST in my original post).
Respect that i am speaking from real experience in the trenches, sitting on IEEE 802.3 physical layer committees in addition to working on PCI (et. all), Infiniband and appropriately USB-IF consortiums. Also, from 10 years of working in semiconductor ATE testing where one of my jobs was to optimize "the contacters" on the test head that grabs the chip while it is fully tested within a second or less. Here small highly inductive power and signal paths are anathema to eliminating false positives and negatives (rejects).
Here is another mature concept that I learned from my customers who freak out when you introduce a change that is not required, even though through all types of proof you can guarantee it will not cause problems. If is not broken do not fix it.
But this DAC has decided to fix an interface that is not broken, I have not ever heard one audio enthusiast complain about the USB interface, and say we got to go micro. Not one. Show me one, please.
And good lord, you still have not given us a reason to make the change then some obscure reference that is meaningless.
Finally a piece of advice, making comments like: I've actually resoldered USB jacks (very fine work to do by hand), and these things have big ground lugs which also serve as structural support for the jack, never mind anything else. Tells people that you are a hobbyist who dabbles in Hardware. Anyone working in the hardware industry that can garnish the type of experience you seem to have, would have technicians available to them. Now if your a technician, then I can respect that. -
Please note that I did already say there is at least a theoretical place for a USB isolator, but in that case you're defending yourself from the source rather than extraneous noise. I absolutely stand by my statements that on either side of the isolator, any standards-complaint USB cable is entirely sufficient. I have nothing against Schiit, and the PYST is a good cable. I do have something against a $600 USB cable with special magic fairy dust applied. You seem to think this was an attack, and lash out in response, where it would appear we agree.
If you really have experience in the trenches as you say, you'd know that high energy physicists and engineers absolutely do their own work. It's not farmed out, go grab the oscilloscope and get to work chasing down problems. Again, attacking based on pure speculation is insulting. Please refrain.
I will only engage you further if you stop this behavior.
Now, if you want a poor female port, look up the Nexus 6. My old 6 has a very loose connection, and many others have had the port fail so they have to rely on the Qi wireless charging to get their phone charged.
Now, I did also have a Blue Snowball where the USB-B port was loose, but that was because I adjusted its position and the angle is just terrible with it (45 degree between ground and parallel to ground) so it wouldn't stay plugged in. I found the Usb-mini connection on the Blue Yeti better because of both positioning and lighter cable from positioning again (moved several times and always trying to find a good position to minimize PC case noise pickup).
Lightning seems to be a bad connector if you aren't using Apple cables, so I'd never want to go that way (knockoffs not powering properly at all times).
USB-C has been amazing. All they have to do is throw in a USB-C to USB-A cable and they solve their worry about people not having that cable. In fact it would be better than their RCA cable thrown in, since most of us have an unbalanced DAC with those cables already.
I've seen all but A and C (and mini to a lesser extent but all that have those are PS3 controllers, Blue Yeti, and cheap SD card MP3 players) fail so far or have issues with connectors one way or another, and have provided consumer examples for USB-micro in two different ways. USB-micro needs to die when we have C. There is no excuse anymore.
I will check to see if we can switch to USB-B without affecting the timeline.
OK: I have seen all the comments here and there is a pretty clear community mandate to revise the USB-micro to B. Things have already set in motion to change to USB-B. (USB-C would be a change in cost and timing.)
Thank you!!!!
If I was in a financial position to be an early adopter, I would join the drop. I am excited about what you are trying to do. If the initial feedback is positive (the pieces all came together), than I will be buying one.
I let my emotion get away on my last post, but re-reading it, I think the damage I did was mostly to myself by almost providing my resume ~ a very silly thing to do.
Despite that the quality of audio has been reduced in the last 40 years in favor of accessibility, cost and ease of use, the time is now for it to swing back. The culture/community around "vinyl" is doing their part, always have. Dre and Jimmy Iovine did theirs with Beats (many people ditched their apple earbuds). The challenge though is that analog electronics is damn near impossible to fully understand, even for folks that are "technical." With my breadth of experience, as I have said, the more I learn, the more I realize how much I do not know. But, places like MD can pull the technologists already on here into this daunting world. Audio is highly subjective and a multi-variable mess (not black and white, not digital, not zero-sum gain). Your audience is going to strive for objective, quantitative and "digital" reasons to make the jump into Audiophile world. I just hope you provide killer products at a digestible price that these folks will take the leap of faith an buy. And some day they will realize that they have just sat around with their friends, having an adult cocktail, at then end of the day in the sun, listening to a HiDef drop (perhaps of 'Astral Weeks' ;~) ) a couple times in a row, and have all enjoyed themselves, even though only a few sentences have been spoken. I think that fits into MD over all vision, people can trust that MD has figured out for them what Audiophile product works at the right price? I think that would benefit the whole damn industry, and it is why I get so damn pissed when I believe I see it going the other way.
Peace
Be well
I for one enjoyed your and JDWarner’s exchange. While the “popcorn” factor was maybe a little higher than necessary the reality is that the rest of us learned a lot from the exchange - and hey, look at it this way, your discussion influenced the design in a positive way!
On a standalone desktop component, substituting a full-size receptacle for the micro-B input is a change that I suspect many will find preferable. And it is easier to find well built USB A-B cables that reliably meet the parameters of the USB 2.0 specification in audio applications than alternatives.