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 follow the mantra, "buy low mod high" on my headphones (unless I buy high expecting them to sound good without any work). I bought these suspecting they'd need some work based on the first round of measurements posted with the announcements. I got them and my suspicions were confirmed. They were uncomfortable, the low bass (below 40Hz or so) was anemic and there was a bit of a peak at around 9kHz. The same complaints the haters have about them. I burned them in, the highs calmed down a bit, and the bass extended a little further. I changed to some velour HM5 pads that I had sitting around and they got more comfortable and the bass extension went beyond my low audible range. I put a single ply of tissue paper behind my pads and knocked down the sharp peak as well as the rest of the high end a bit too much for my liking. I opened the vent holes in the driver plate and raised the high end back up a bit too much and ended up covering some of them again.
These are now a highly detailed, but laid back, fun headphone to listen to. Do I disapprove of them and call them crap because I had to make some modifications to make them wonderful? No, I don't, but then I didn't buy them for $100 expecting them to be perfect and I'm not afraid to monkey around inside them to tweak things to my liking. That ability to be modified to suit the users' demands is a benefit in my opinion.
The complaints some have are legitimate, but let's not forget these are $100 cans and there's things you can do to make them punch way above their weight, that are not hard to do. I'd call mine a combination of a Philips Fidelio L1 and Fidelio X2 for frequency response with a better sound stage than either.
Comparing them to SHP9500 since it's kind of the current best in class. SHP9500 has horrible bass extension (like can't hear anything below 60Hz kind of bad) and fall off your head whenever you move. They sound similar right out of the box except the highs are sharper on the HE350 and the HE350's sound stage is much bigger and bass extends farther. The SHP9500 is more comfortable due to the horrible pads the HE350 comes with. The major difference is that you can't mod the SHP9500 without irreparably damaging them to get into their guts so there's no hope for improvements. HE350 is much better after mods but probably not before them.
Anything else that comes close in <$100 price range? Nope. There's plenty of closed back options but they don't have a sound stage and honestly I wouldn't claim they have better bass extension. Other <$100 open cans are not as good as the SHP9500 for various reasons. HE350 handily wins with a few easy mods. Straight out of the box, the SHP9500 wins though.