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
Monster power conditioners are a scam, but the idea of power conditioning is worthwhile. This unit is very well priced, like lots of Yulong stuff. As with anything, DIY is cheaper, more rewarding, and a hell of a lot more hassle.
As I stated before, if you don't have any power quality issues in your area then you probably won't notice any difference and having a power conditioner is probably pointless. If you have power quality issues, then a power conditioning stage in your circuit becomes essential, whether that's a basic power conditioner like this unit or using some sort of device that employs AVR with full sine wave output (like higher-end UPSes). The difference is immediately noticeable in the effect it has on the noise floor of the signal.
Also, the idea that a varistor is going to protect anything against a lightning strike is laughable. Simple surge protection in devices is intended for handling the types of voltage surges that occur every day due to load characteristics in the power system, not for stopping damage due to things like lightning strikes regardless of what the marketing material may say. The only way to prevent damage from a lightning strike is to provide a solid path to ground and employ a lightning arrester (usually by way of a MOV) where power comes into your building. If your utility company isn't a bunch of totally lazy schmucks, they'll already have lightning arresters on the poles at regular intervals which are maintained (they're required to be there, the maintenance quality is what may be in question).
A simple way to understand the noise floor sans any artifacts in recording is to simply listen to your headphones at your normal volume level with nothing playing in a quiet room. If you hear anything at all when there's no input audio signal, what you're hearing is noise that's in the output due to either power noise, EMI, or RFI. Tube amplifiers can also cause some noise in the line and there's not too much you can do about that except get less noisy tubes, as it's inherent to how tubes work. Power conditioning works by removing SOME of the sources of noise that may invade your audio output, thereby reducing the noise floor and allowing for an increase in audible dynamic range. This is especially important if you listen to tracks with significant quiet sections, such as a classical music.
When listening to your noise floor, I would recommend making a "silent" track in audacity (or whatever program you like) and playing that. I do this to test if any of the other components in the system (DAC, source, etc.) introduce noise.
I would also recommend proper grounding of all your equipment.