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
After doing quite a bit of research I have a question/concern about using this amp (or any really) the way I'm planning to. I'm hoping to get some feedback before making any purchases. The headphones I will be driving will be the HD6xx when they arrive later this year. The system I will be listening to them from is built on top of an ASUS Z170-A motherboard, which has a fairly capable audio system already.
I have dug up the audio specific details on this board and it has a Realtek ALC-892 for a DAC and a TI R4580 for the amp (full amp specs here: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/rc4580-q1.pdf). ASUS has also taken some measures to protect the audio signal further, such as a pre-regulator in front of the ALC-892, splitting left and right audio signals between different PCB layers, various levels of EMI shielding, and a de-pop circuit.
I'm not very well versed on reading amp spec sheets, but from what I can gather from the link above, combined with what the headphone power calculator on digizoid is telling me, it actually seems like this amp probably could power the HD6xx fairly well, though probably not with the headroom many here would recommend, and it's likely that bass frequencies especially could suffer a bit. So... I am looking for a good amp that will supply this headroom and really breathe the life into the 6xx that they deserve.
I am planning on starting with just an amp, as the 24bit/192kHz the Z170-A integrated audio is capable of seems more than sufficient for me, for now at least. Because of this, my plan then is to drive the amp straight off the motherboard, with a 3.5mm to RCA (L/R) cable off of the headphone jack. My concern is, given the fairly high output of this board's amp, won't this be "double-amping" the signal, or will the Z170-A essentially be acting as a pre-amp in this case?
Will it just be a matter of turning the system volume in the OS down to a lower level to prevent too high a signal coming into the amp? And, if so, if the OS level accidentally gets turned all the way up at some point, do I risk damaging any of the hardware (amp and/or headphones), or eardrums (I guess this one's fairly obvious)?
Since the Z170-A also has an optical output, would I be better off putting a DAC with an optical input in between the motherboard and the amp to avoid this issue?
Sorry for the long, rambling post. As you can probably tell I've been doing a lot of reading lately (maybe too much).
It appears that the on-board amp is configurable to limit itself to the front panel output only, which I would do if I hooked the MCTH up to the rear audio jack. This would prevent any double-amping of the audio signal. Thanks again for your inputs on this!
It could just be me but I seem to hear the effect of jitter. The drums and any impact sound seem dull through my motherboard audio, and the reason why I chose to purchase a DAC (MD O2+SDAC DAC/Amp).
Try listening to the 1Khz sine wave with jitter here: http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/what-does-jitter-sound-like If you're unable to distinguish the jitter samples from the Original (click on the "1KHz v??" to reveal what the sample is) then there might be jitter in your audio system (e.g. the motherboard).
Oh well, I guess. At the moment I still don't see a huge need to go out and get an external DAC.
There's nothing wrong with using mobo and picking up an external DAC later on if you feel the need to upgrade.