Can you damage earphones with sudden loud music?

it is possible to damage earphones with sudden high-volume blasts.

i've done the same to myself several times... i'd be more worried about your ears, than the IEMs.

give it a few hours and try them again, it may just be your ears

Explain how they sound "different".

And I highly doubt you have damaged your ear drums. You don't know how many times I done the same thing as you.

Swear this has happened to me too, however not with the IE7. Instead of "breaking" it, I thought of it more as burn in related incident.
Imagen instead of burning in your headphones for hours&hours, I accidentally left them running at a very high volume for about half an hour. This has had a massive impact on SQ on my RE0.
I wouldn't do it on purpose though, damaging a driver might seem a possible effect, although unlikely.

greets

For optimal burn-in, blast sound through your IEMs at maximum volume until you see smoke coming from the IEM. When there is just minimal smoke residue on the IEM, that is optimal burn-in time. If the housing starts to melt, you've gone too far.

I had a fullsize speaker damaged due to sudden music at full volume. You hear like popping sound from bass and such...
Haven't had that happen with IEMs. Knock on wood...

Yes, guys lets listen to scott!

Dude you are a very funny person.

OP, I've done that around 1000 times and never hurt my headphones (although I've probably taken a few years off my life - nothing like the adrenaline jolt that comes from that, eh?). I'm virtually certain I've heard some members state that it actually helped their sound, although no one would ever do that on purpose.

if the power from a source is higher than the rated max input power level of the iem, it is most likely that the iem will spoil... hopefully yours did not...

your burnt in process is complete now it's time to sent it back for a new set....
jks..
isn't the IE series suppose 2 have a large sound stage? u might have just done 2 weeks of burn in, in one second :P

You might have freaked out because of the sudden change from silence to max volume... but if you do it consciously, to raise the volume bar from null to max, you will find that most DAP's max volume are quite tolerable for reasonable periods of time... I really don't think a single device (a laptop, an iPod, etc.) will let you reach for headphone killing power. I think you need at least some beast of an amp or many amps chained together to do that, or at least to do it to the type of headphones I use: clip-ons, earbuds and Grados.

 

By doing this test you will not only fight your fear, you might even feel relaxed and kind of euphoric for a moment, due either to the staepedes protective reflex or to some other psychoacoustic effects. Also it will let you hear how loud and well can your phones really perform (it is never good to continue leveling up the volume once you begun hearing distorsion) / how much your ears can really take (takes more than a walk on a busy street or a gunshot to hurt, it take a life in a noisy factory unprotected or a fall into an erupting volcano) / and finally you'll see for yourself if you broke them, which I believe you did not.

 

Be careful though, go very gradually, stop if it hurts, and pick an atmospheric song with slow voices and soft wind/string instruments, avoid percussions, hip hop, rock, metal.. avoid sudden impact sounds at such levels, if you want to make sure nothing happens to sensible phones. I can say you'll feel better after doing that.