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
Rock on dude!
I have seen solid metal enclosures with copper seals, that also are machined within with patterns to suppress/redirect frequencies, further specially coated for suppression, that still make it in.
Put the headphone jack into a scope and cycle the router 📡
Mr. U.: "Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere."
If you want to leave it there, you can run a ground strap to that plate, directly to ground-nothing else, it will help,, something anyway... a secondary ground plane for the router as well, no harm done.
From Shiit itself: "1. Cellphone or WiFi router interference. You probably have a cellphone or wifi router too close to your headphone amp or DAC. Move these devices away. No high-res audio device was designed to sit next to a device that can put out watts of gigahertz noise. "
http://www.schiit.com/guides/amp-problems
Sounds like you killed it, but if you want to take it all the way out, don't know what you have currently for a USB, just go optical (USB that is). When I first used the Corning, I thought it was messed up somehow,,, like too clear, "where did everything go?"
I'm not sure if your Schiit DAC has power on the USB port, since it has external power. If it does, you should remove the 5V power pin one from the adapter. The Corning optical USB can power itself from the supply side and it is not meant to power an external, anything, other than itself.
From an older post, and you would need an adapter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-Adapter-Type-B-Male-to-Type-A-Male-Gold-plated/391601970032?hash=item5b2d4bdb70%3Ag%3AZTkAAOSwR6RaCu2L&_sacat=0&_nkw=USB+adapter+a+male+b+male++gold&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0%7C0
One reason I got a Korg MR-2000s, no USB, SSD to internal DAC. Now still using a Gemini USB which makes a difference, separate clean power and a decent well shielded cable for data. I use a Corning optical USB when I have the PC far from the DAC. Still have to go through the Gemini as it is a USB powered DAC, but actually seems to act as a ”purifier” (hate the term, Optical VCSEL USB Repeater is better). I heard about these things from a guy at Corning, so thought I would try, later saw others doing the same. They were made for folks working in data centers, shortest one is 10m, what I have, but no issue just tie up what you don't use, it's optical, the long ones are 50m ;) Ref: https://www.corning.com/optical-cables-by-corning/worldwide/en/products/usb-optical-cables.html
Warning, no nukes etc., everything has its limits: "The product is not designed or intended for use in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, weapons systems or other systems in which the failure of the product could lead directly to death, personal injury or severe physical or environmental damage. " Bought mine here:https://www.ebay.com/itm/Corning-USB-3-0-Optical-Cable-10-Meter-32-8-AOC-ACS2CVA010M20/391821809435?hash=item5b3a66571b:g:rIQAAOSwR2RaAOkU
Even older post USB stuff, fyi (hate to type;): USB 2.0 @ 480 Mbit/s is more than enough for audio data streaming, today, and likely for a while. 3.0 will work, backwards compatible so the specs say. The concern is with the streaming / Isochronous part, it is exactly that, all the losses & corruption are yours... no correction, no re-takes, garbage out = garbage played, pretty much. You see soooo much talk about the data being digital ones & zeros, doesn't matter, snake-oil, yaddi-yadda, yes just kill me - you feel reading on and on about it. Yes, I thought the same, for a while, then thought again... so I tested it, done, simple. What really happens in the chip processing world of DAC's? It is really that you get bad data, oh well, the show must go on, we play what works, tone it down or just effectively mute it; here it is from a horses mouth (Cirrus that I use as an example): "The CS4398 can detect errors in the DSD data that do not comply to the SACD specification. The STATIC_DSD and INVALID_DSD bits (Reg. 09h) allow the CS4398 to alter the incoming invalid DSD data. Depending on the error, the data may either be attenuated or replaced with a muted DSD signal (the MUTEC pins would set according to the DAMUTE bit (Reg. 04h)). " https://d3uzseaevmutz1.cloudfront.net/pubs/proDatasheet/CS4398_F2.pdf Yes, I'm a DSD listener, so I'm stuck with USB until we get something better for audio... The clicks & pops folks talk about, that is catastrophic level data loss/corruption. The pragmatic solution is get a decent, well-shielded USB cable, https://www.amazon.com/Pangea-Audio-cable-solid-silver/dp/B005AUH8SM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1508344791&sr=8-&keywords=pangea+silver+USB . This is something we can correct, poor signal paths within the DAC, well get a good DAC... you do have one. In addition the 5V quality from any PC likely sucks for USB powered DAC's. I feed my 5V from a truly split USB, not power from two connectors, into my USB powered Korg 100 DAC. I got a used ebay, new is overpriced, Gemini, an alternative is: https://www.amazon.com/Pangea-Audio-Premier-Cable-Meter/dp/B06XQFW494 Your Schiit is AC powered, so just clean AC is fine. I simplify [cheat] here with a good UPS, pragmatism again, for both AC (PC & amp) and the USB 5V I use a CyberPower CP1350PFCLCD pure sine wave, protects and cleans;) A good solution to many noise issues, but how this works so well at less than a $1,000.00 is an audiophile mystery...
The final solution is optical. The TOSLINK stuff we have now is just a self-handicapped antique, a circa '1983' Toshiba "invention". It is nothing more than a LED photo-coupler first designed for max 6 Mb/s. By today's standards @ 10/25/40/100Gbps, it is equivalent to lighting bonfires on mountain-tops as repeaters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LGJ7evrAg . DSD native studio masters over a new optical link engineered specifically for today and the future, DSD 1024?, is what we need. Not some hand-me-down or half-baked “crossover” stuff from the telephony folks either. Make it for high fidelity audio and someone else can “adopt” it, if they wish. The market is big enough in pure audio to sustain it's own optical standard. Hell,, make it dual frequency, one dedicated for the music stream and the other for data exchange, stop the compromising. The fiber is not the issue, but glass should be the standard, no more plastic,, please..., it is the laser and the transceivers that are key. Today' performance fiber lasers are VCSEL's and the transceiver tech has come a long, long way since the 80's. Yes, we could go back to an all-in-one platform and take away the interconnect problem, then we will stifle competition and innovation,, again... no thanks... just take away the interconnect issue.