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
My signal chain(s): Laptop>Teac UD-501>Denon 2808>Emotiva XPA-100's>Emotiva ERT 8.3 (Single-ended) Laptop>Teac UD-501>Cayin IHA-6>Elex/HE500 (Fully Balanced) Laptop>Teac UD-501>Gustard H10>more headphones than I would care to list (Partially Balanced)
My DAC sits in the rack with the rest of my AV gear for the stereo/HT, I use the singled ended outputs into the receiver's 5.1 analog inputs and it acts as a pre-amp to my amps (1 each for L/R) again via RCA cables. The cables are all 2 meters or less for this chain. My headphone amps sit on a table at the end of my couch, around 15 ft 'as the cable runs' from the DAC and past power outlets. I use the balanced XLR output in this instance. The UD-501 & Cayin are both fully balanced designs and the UD offers a dual-mono configuration down to the transformers. The Cayin has some apparent advantages when being run balanced. It's OI drops from 10ohms to .3, and it goes from 2ish watts to 7 watts. I have tried the single ended output into the Cayin as I wanted to try various SE only headphones with it (no splitting/summing circuit).
SE vs Balanced effects with my headphone gear:
1) Balanced is more flexible with the .3 ohm output. I have a lot of pairs I would like to use with this thing (Cayin). That 10 ohm OI of SE out (120ohm on the 2nd SE output) will impact the frequency response of several of them.
2) The balanced run has a blacker background and greater soundstage size by a shade on the Cayin, more than likely a byproduct of reduced noise and crosstalk. On the Gustard it just gives it a slightly blacker ground.
3) Knowing my HE500's are getting more than enough wattage and should I ever decide to pickup a used HE-6, will not have to resort to re-purposing a speaker amp.
Additional Comments:
My prior DAC included a pre-amp, although not the best digital implementation it still sounded decent controlling the volume. That DAC was a balanced differential design and my XPA-100's accept XLR and/or RCA. I couldn't tell a difference on the monoblock/tower chain as the run is short and each amp only handles one channel from separate cables. I am personally a big fan of dual-mono configurations as you can see from my choice of gear. To me they give benefits to soundstage, imaging and low-level listening enjoyment. Since many of the balanced gear designs are dual-mono I think the benefits from that design philosophy get lumped in with "Balanced is great man!!"