Hi there,

I'm posting because I'm having a small issue. I've bought Shure E500 18 months ago. Was really happy with their sound.

But the cable broke 6 months or so ago. So I sent them back. Got them replaced with SE530. I was thinking "cool"!

I added a headsix to my rig. Overall it sounded pretty good.

However, a few weeks ago, I noticed that a new issue had appeared. Some frequencies seemed to be "blurred". It's hard to describe but it mostly appears in bass frequencies. Instead of hearing a clear "thump", I get a "thum-pff", like a small distortion of the sound.
It s almost non existent when listening to classical music but gets pretty ugly and easy to notice when listening to electronic/rock with a good amount of bass

The problem is with the SE530 : I tried them on both the line out and the headphone out of the ipod and the issue remains, so it aint the headsix.

I'm probably going to send them back once more (I dont even have the bill anymore so I'll have to do some talking), but I find it quite disappointing to have an issue again.

I'm thinking it might have been caused by one time, when I tried to shut off my headsix by turning the volume knob but turned it clockwise instead of anticlockwise (my mistake) and that ended up sending a brief (only a few seconds before I removed the iems from my ears as fast as I could and turned the volume down), but painful, burst of SCREAMING sound in my ears (and in the SE530 at the same time). I can't say I noticed the issue appearing right at that time, but that would be the only thing that could have caused the issue, apart from a defective unit that would suddenly "break".

Anyway, I was wondering what would be your advice in my case? I'm honestly a bit dissapointed by shure, but I thought they sounded pretty good.

So I was thinking of :
_ buying new iems : maybe sleek sa6, or livewires, or maybe even ue11 if I suddenly get rich (and maybe sell the repaired se530 to get the money)
_ buying a good sounding portable amp with a power on/off button seperate from the volume knob to avoid another accident of the same kind (if that s really what caused the damage)
_ keeping the repaired SE530

what would be your advice? and you think that it s my volume-knob mistake that caused the damage?

Send them back in for repair. I've never heard of armature drivers being damaged by excessive volume, but Im sure its possible if it was THAT loud. You probably wont make the same mistake again with your amp, just when turning it off make sure to twist the knob slowly. Give the 530's another shot. Theyre great.