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
On the other hand, I'm really liking the sound and construction of mine (and the nice cable) but I have a newbie audio question:
I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I've slowly been getting more and nicer equipment the past few years. These are by far the most expensive and nicest IEMs I own now. (For reference I also have some Klipsch, Etymotic, and Sennheiser IEMs.) I don't have a golden ear for distinguishing super subtle sound quality differences but I can tell when silence is not absolutely pitch black. These Novas must be significantly more sensitive than my other sets, because no matter what source I use there is a little background hiss. It's worst with my laptop (that actually had a decent HD soundcard), but a bit better with my iPhone 6, or when I use my DACPort HD or Geek Out IEM 100 DAC/amps. But even with those DACs there is hiss!
My question is: what sort of DAC do I need for pitch black silence? Is the stat that I have to look at when comparing DACs TDH? If so, how low do I need to go for these Novas? The DACPort HD has aTDH of 0.002%, which I thought was pretty good. Do I need a desktop DAC just to get a clean signal (instead of a portable DAC)? If so, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of using a portable IEM? Is the Grace m9xx a clean enough source for these to be hiss free?
Sorry for all the questions, I'm just trying to figure out what I need to look for next to clean up the signal.