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
When I received it and plugged it in, this happened: (excerpts from my email to him). “Got the shipment with the MJ2. Need to pick your brains. Something strange with the MJ2 cable. When I plugged it into the headphones I heard nothing. I checked the connection and the settings in the Onkyo DP-X1. I thought maybe the TRRS scheme in the DAP balanced-in was unusual, just like you had said the MJ2 connection was. When I couldn’t get a peep out of the DAP, I thought maybe the headphone was kaput. I used the native unbalanced MJ2 cable. Great sound! I listened for some time and decided to reconnect with your cable. Lo and behold, amazing sound! I listened for a long time. The audio was wonderful. Later, I reconnected the native cable through a headphone amp. This is a hungry headphone. After sometime, back to your balanced cable. No sound again. Change to different cable, sounding fine. Back to your balanced cable, great sound again. I went through this experiment several times with the same result each time. I’m flummoxed. Clearly your cable is fine. But why is this happening? When used with a balanced cable, does it have trouble functioning? Anyway, when it works, your cable sounds fantastic”.
These were David’s replies: 1. “When I tested the original cable, I noticed that the headphone knows which is left and right and it doesn't matter which one is plugged into the left or right, the sound somehow comes out of the correct channel. I guess that's why the stock 3.5mm headphone end connectors aren't labeled L/R like most cables. Just now, I found this information that describes the issue completely: "The MJ2 do have left & right indicated on the inside of the headband, near the earcups. As you mention, the cables aren’t marked. This drove me crazy until discovering they don’t need to be! Mitchell & Johnson did something brilliant. They ran the left and right channel to both earcups using a 3.5mm trs plug. The internal female connector is only wired for the correct channel. There’s no way to plug the cable in with reversed channels. This feature is lost if balanced cables are substituted." It sounds like the only work around is what what you discovered and executed due to the unique wiring in the MJ2. Perhaps I didn't experience what you did because I used a 2.5mm balanced to 3.5mm stereo adapter and it worked great. However, I have a theory that due to the way the MJ2 has both right and left channels in each ear cup, if the 3.5mm headphone connectors on the cable have the tip and ring solder points bridged, then it might work, and like the stock cable it may not matter which side is connected to the headphone. The cable you have now has Tip/Sleeve for left channel, and Ring/Sleeve for right channel. The caveat is that I cannot guarantee that it would work as I don't have an MJ2 on hand. I hope what I wrote makes sense”. 2. “I'll formulate a post in the MJ2 thread on head-fi. Sounds like a few people have balanced cables. I'm wondering if the balanced connection at the 2.5mm TRRS may be causing the issue if the headphone connectors on the left and right driver housing is able to determine a stereo connection for each appropriate L/R channel because the ground is common for both sides. With balanced, they are separated. I haven't seen a MJ2 opened up to see the PCB board, but I surmise that the separate grounds versus common ground is the culprit. Why the balanced cable works after the stock cable is inserted, I can only guess that some electrical components is able to get a charge (perhaps in a capacitor) long enough so that when the stock cable and balance cable is swapped, it works.” Makes sense to me. Has anyone else had a problem like this with the MJ2? What do the Illuminati at HeadFi think?