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
Manufactures often only list one or the other (dB/mW or dB/V). Massdrop lists sensitivity but often enough it's actually listing efficiency (have to check manufactures websites). And... even manufactures misuse these terms. You have to look at the units (dB/mW or dB/V) to truely know which is being used. Hence, the confusion everyone seems to have. It's not exactly straight forward to determine if a headphone is easy to drive.
In this case, the HE350 has an efficiency rating of 93 dB/mW (btw higher the number the easier it is to drive). If you compare this to enough headphones you'll learn it isn't the worst, but it's still pretty bad for a consumer headphone around this price . If you enter in this information into a website like http://www.digizoid.com/headphones-power.html you'll see that to get 110dB SPL, you need ~1Vrms and 50mA which is basically at the limit or too much for many devices to provide.
side note : 1Vrms = about 3V peak to peak - nearing smart phone battery limit. And the op amps (simple amplifiers) probably used in your portable device have current limits between 35mA and 70mA from what I've seen (not confident what a good range should be).
(for these headphones) If you want it another 5dB SPL louder, voltage and current requirements nearly double. If you want another 5dB, nearly doubles again. It wouldn't surprise me if many devices can only get these headphones to 105 dB SPL, which is probably why you find them to be kind of quiet.