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
You probably won't really care about the sound quality difference between the two when it's sound-effects and people's shitty mics that are the quality bottleneck in your chain. If you do care, check the frequency response charts for both headsets.
My suggestion is to go with the 650, if nothing else it's the benchmark everything else seems to be compared to. So if you end up not liking them for whatever reason you can probably find a comparison with the next set of cans you look at and the 650s.
*disclaimer* I don't own either yet (ordered HD6XX though) and no one owns these yet, so take any advice on them with a box of salt.
Do you want great spatial imaging because you like to be really competitive in FPS games? As others have mentioned here, the K7XX might be a great choice for you.
Do you prefer an immersive experience in action games, including great bass? You might prefer the HD 650 / HD6XX.
Some games, .e.g. Remember Me or NieR:Automata, have amazing music that can elevate the experience to a new level. Is that important to you, and what kind of music do your favorite games tend to have? Choose some headphones that can reproduce that style of music well. The HE4XX might be a great choice.
Personally, while I love the imaging of the K7XX, I find the bass to be rather lacking, and the highs to often be way too sharp in my games. I love the comfort of them, though, and can wear them for hours on end. I'm looking forward to receiving my HD6XX in part because I think they will provide a more immersive experience for me in the type of games I play most.
On my PC, on the other hand, I bought a new Astro MixAmp Pro TR in early 2016 and still don't like it. I never use the surround sound because the Dolby Headphone standard it relies on for encoding 5.1 and 7.1 audio into 2-channel audio just makes everything sound much worse in my opinion. (Online you can find many others complaining about the weird "tin can" reverberation effects, too.) It works fine in stereo mode, but I regret the purchase overall, as it's not worth the price if you're not using surround mode. At least the build quality seems to be quite good; I expect it to last a very long time, just like the first one I bought.
I decided to upgrade my PC setup with a K7XX (and soon HD6XX) and a modmic, which has worked really well so far. I don't see why it wouldn't work well (or better, in fact) with a PS4 and the Sound Blaster X7, too. I'm working upgrading my amp and DAC at the moment, focusing on stereo sound only because I just don't like the way any of the currently available surround-to-stereo encoders sound (except those built into games).
tl;dr: Go for it.
Like I said, Dolby Headphone is infamous for its strange echoing soundscape that makes you feel like you're inside a lifeless, tin can environment. Simply standing and firing a weapon in Battlefield 4 with surround enabled on my MixAmp sounds awful to me. Turn off the surround feature, and suddenly the feeling of life is restored to the game's sound – and the ridiculous echoes disappear, too.
I have tried Sound Blaster's THX TruStudio Pro (which turned into SBX Pro Studio) before, and I enjoyed it when I had a low-end system and cheap headphones. I haven't bothered trying Razer's surround software because reviews of it are quite mixed, and no one seems to think it's truly great. The other thing is that a little over a decade ago, Creative and Microsoft both made some major decisions that hampered the development of virtual surround sound on PCs, which still has effects today. (I can recommend looking up the histories of each of these issues to better understand them.)
Partly as a result of the changes to Windows, many modern game developers now include their own surround-to-stereo encoders in their PC games anyway, which usually sound decent enough. Of course, that's processed by your CPU, not your sound card. I don't know exactly what the situation is on modern consoles.
Truthfully, the best upgrade I've made so far has simply been picking up a good pair of open-backed headphones. This will sound strange to you if you haven't experienced something like this before, but using my K7XX with stereo output from my MixAmp and in-game headphone encoding sounds, to my ears, significantly better than the K7XX with surround output from the MixAmp. Every once in a while I try turning on the surround, for example with a new game, hoping to hear something that will make me not regret buying that Astro box; but I always end up right where I started, in stereo mode. *It just sounds better.*
By the way, that's not at all to say that positional information is completely lost in stereo mode. On the contrary, I find it to be quite good with the open-backed cans. With the stereo setup and quality headphones, I feel that I get the best of both worlds: a rich soundscape (by which I mean that things sound like they are where they should be) and rich sound (not distorted by flawed surround-to-stereo encoders that break my sense of immersion).
Important anecdote: I remember reading stuff just like what I wrote above before I bought that second MixAmp. And I thought to myself, "No, I know better. I've studied HRTF theory (look it up). Get the proper setup, and the hardware surround encoding will inevitably sound more realistic than just stereo. Plus, I my old MixAmp works pretty well, so the new one with all these new technologies must be even better, right?" (The old one still worked on my PS3 but not on my PC.) Have I mentioned that I *still regret that purchase*? I kind of wish I had believed the stereo supporters in the first place, but on the other hand, I probably learned more because my sound still sucked and I spent a lot of time trying to fix it.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt because I don't understand what the situation is on PS4. If that's your primary gaming platform, some of what I said might not apply. And no matter what, rest easy knowing that regardless of what you do, the quality of the sound design in games is increasing at a rapid pace. I'm constantly amazed at how much better it seems to get every year. That makes it more rewarding to try to get the most out of your system, but it also means that even if you use $20 headphones, game developers are giving you free upgrades all the time. =)
Again, the answer to "Which is better for gaming?" depends on your particular needs and budget. Are you talking about gaming on a PS4? I don't own one and don't know all about the system, so maybe someone else has some more informed and experienced advice. I would say yes, you probably need both an amp and a DAC (your MixAmp contains both, as does the X7). Ultimately you need an analog signal to go into your headphones, but the PS4 probably only has digital outputs; therefore, you need a DAC. The exception would be if you wanted to use the headphone output from your controller, but I'm guessing you don't. (Hey, maybe it's better than I think. Again, I'm no expert on PS4, although I can tell you that Bluetooth can be a limiting factor for sound quality.)
Strictly speaking, no, you don't need an amp, at least not for the K7XX. It's not like you're not going to hear anything. However, if you want to get the real value out of either the K7XX or the HE4XX, then yes, you'll need an amp (regardless of whether on PS4 or PC or whatever). I don't have enough knowledge to tell you which would sound better without an amp. My advice would be to either invest in the amp and the headphones, or spend less on the headphones to get something you can make full use of. Just my two cents.
Finally, back to "Which would be better for gaming?" See my previous response again, where I explained that "gaming" means different things to different people. I know it's a lot to think about, but if you're going to spend hundreds of dollars on this equipment, you owe it to yourself to take the time to figure out what you really want. Once you have your priorities set on what you want from your headphones, read a lot of reviews and discussions of headphones you're considering, to see which ones might work best for your needs and budget. Just be careful not to overspend on any one component just because someone says it's "the best" or "the best for gaming". Unfortunately there is no answer to that question that universally applies to everyone's setup, taste, and budget.