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
Solid Sate Amps are great for amplifying without colouring the sound. If you just need a boost in amplitude, these are the way to go. Most just do the job of amplification and nothing else. These tend to have a colder sound although with anything, it's not always the case.
Tube amps tend to colour sound more than solid state. It usually makes audio signal sound warmer with a slight increase in the mid and low-mid for amps with vintage style tubes. The cool thing about tube amps is, you can easily switch out the tubes to get a different sound, making them a lot more versatile. You can achieve a very analytic cold sound with these amps and the right tubes (usually Russian tubes are more articulate and cold sounding).
Between those two technologies, the only other things to consider is price point and the inclusion of a DAC. I suggest getting a tube amp and then play around with switching tubes out for different sounds. It's the more expandable than a solid state amp.
You cannot get reasonable sound quality from HD650 without a fairly potent amp. I wouldn't recommend anything weaker than the venerable O2 which is still too weak imo. Yes, you can make them loud enough with a mobile device, but they will sound horrible because the output amp in the device is too weak to force the needed current through the headphone to get to the voltage it is trying to drive.
As with all things audio, sufficient drive capacity is still going to mean subjective differences in sound, as are the $350 headphones at the source of the question here. If you can't tell that you need a decent amp to drive the HD650, you probably can't tell the difference between the HD650 and the HD202 and are better off spending that extra $330 on something where you will really get some value from.