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Rattling in D2000's (noob question)

post #1 of 21
12/29/09 at 11:03am
Thread Starter 
I got a pair of Denon D2000's for Christmas (my first pair of headphones that were actually of decent quality) and I decided to go online and try a bass test, and when I turned it up past the halfway mark my headphones made a weird rattling noise. I'm not experienced with headphones, so I was hoping I could get some help here.

Is this normal? Did I damage my headphones by doing this?
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post #2 of 21
12/29/09 at 12:18pm
How are the headphones now, do they sound weird? And was this noise clearly mechanical from the phones itself, or just something else unusual?

They shouldn´t damage that easily though, considering you were able to listen, the volume shouldn´t have been too extreme.
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post #3 of 21
12/29/09 at 2:22pm
Thread Starter 
The headphones sound normal to my ears, and nothing has changed. They lack bass, but that's because of the lack of amp rather than the headphones being "broken"

The noise sounded like it was coming directly from the headphones. I've heard that it could be a stray hair, but when I took the ear-pad off there weren't any stray hairs to be seen. The volume was nowhere near extreme, and was only just past the halfway mark on the iPod. I'm guessing it was nothing, but I would hate to find out somethings wrong when its too late to exchange them.
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post #4 of 21
12/29/09 at 4:23pm
I would say return/exchange them. They should have no rattles! Denons stuff is pretty high quality. They are easy to drive phones at 25ohm. They should have plenty of bass even straight out of an iPod.
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post #5 of 21
12/29/09 at 4:39pm
Denon 2000's lack bass ? I consider myself a slight basshead and even I'm confused on this.
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post #6 of 21
12/29/09 at 4:54pm
check for any hairs, or anything for that matter, on the drivers?
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post #7 of 21
12/29/09 at 4:59pm
Rattling during bassy sequences almost invariably means there's a hair stuck in the driver IME. I've had that happen to a few of my headphones and in each case it was remedied by a thorough (and careful) cleaning.
It's important to realize that high-end headphone drivers are quite resilient and the chances of them being damaged from any volume even remotely listenable is very low.
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post #8 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:08pm
Thread Starter 
I checked again and I don't see any hairs, but that's without going deeper then taking the padding off. I can still return them to Amazon, but that would be a last resort. It might be me being paranoid, but I also thought that they had more bass when I first started listening to them, but the mind plays tricks.

Shahrose - Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that I personally had a low chance of damaging them, and I'm going to do some more listening to see if the sound persists. I don't see anything caught and I'm not experienced enough to start taking things apart, so are there any guides that you can recommend on cleaning them?

Thanks again everyone

EDIT: It's only through the left driver, if that helps at all. But the problem still persists, even after checking to see for any easy-to-see hair. Thoughts?
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post #9 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:18pm
The rattling sound you hear may be clipping.

Disable any EQ or bass boost you may have enabled. EQ and bass boost can cause clipping. If you must use EQ to add bass then you should lower the high and mid frequencies while keeping the bass frequencies at zero. Any time you boost a frequency above zero you run the risk of clipping that frequency.

Where are you getting the bass test? YouTube? YouTube bass tests can clip. The people uploading them are often not sound technicians and don't know how to properly set levels. All the lossy transcoding that YouTube does isn't good for the audio either. No guarantee that the bass test you tried wasn't clipping.

There is also the possibility that the headphone amp you are using simply can't supply the juice that the D2000 needs to play bass. I've heard wimpy amps clip badly trying to drive the D2000.

So disable any EQ and other effects, use a known good bass test sample, and hope that your sound card or amp can give the D2000 what it needs.
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post #10 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:32pm
Thread Starter 
Honestly, I just googled "bass test mp3" and it was the first thing that showed up in the results (not sure if I can post links here) It was a 320kbps file, so I assumed the quality wasn't horrible, and tested it out from there.

I'll try disabling and EQ and any other effects on the iPod. I have amp (iBasso T3 and LOD) coming in the mail tomorrow, but I have to request a return label today (30 day policy) so I'm gonna have to make a decision ASAP. I wish I could wait to test them out with the amp to test for any improvements, but its not an option.

Sorry for being new at this

EDIT: The same rattling noise happened when hooked up the my Macbook, and there were no EQ/bass boosting effects on while playing the mp3. I don't have an amp to try them out with right now, so that's out of the question. I might have to request a return label today, and if the amp fixes the problem, just throw it away and forget I ever requested one.
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post #11 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:44pm
an amp won't fix the rattling.

I would say go ahead and get them replaced.
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post #12 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:53pm
Turn your head side-to-side quickly, as if you were saying no, with the headphones on and don't plug them in anything. Also, be in a quiet room while you're doing this.. Do you hear the rattling noise if you do that?
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post #13 of 21
12/29/09 at 5:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by abreviews View Post
Honestly, I just googled "bass test mp3" and it was the first thing that showed up in the results (not sure if I can post links here) It was a 320kbps file, so I assumed the quality wasn't horrible, and tested it out from there.

I'll try disabling and EQ and any other effects on the iPod. I have amp (iBasso T3 and LOD) coming in the mail tomorrow, but I have to request a return label today (30 day policy) so I'm gonna have to make a decision ASAP. I wish I could wait to test them out with the amp to test for any improvements, but its not an option.

Sorry for being new at this

EDIT: The same rattling noise happened when hooked up the my Macbook, and there were no EQ/bass boosting effects on while playing the mp3. I don't have an amp to try them out with right now, so that's out of the question. I might have to request a return label today, and if the amp fixes the problem, just throw it away and forget I ever requested one.
the sample may be over amped and might be clipping.
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post #14 of 21
12/29/09 at 6:11pm
The amp in the iPod should be fine driving the D2000. I've never pushed my iPod and the D2000 with a bass test, but I've also never heard it clip.

My suspicion is with the bass test mp3. It could be clipping due to the bass levels being too high. Without a known good set of high quality headphones to test or compare against it would be hard to know how that particular bass test sample is supposed to sound. If you know your way around sound editing software you can load the mp3 file and look for visible signs of digital clipping in the file (wave forms that get flatlined).

Look around for a bass test in lossless format taken from a professionally produced CD. You're more likely to get a properly done test that doesn't clip.

Given the time constraints you should probably request the return authorization just in case. Continue looking for a good bass test. You may find that your headphones aren't faulty after all.
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post #15 of 21
12/29/09 at 6:50pm
Thread Starter 
I requested a return because after trying a few more FLAC bass tests, because the rattling sound always came back. I'm going to keep looking for tests until tomorrow when I have to ship them out, and then I'm going to have to go through the process of finding a new pair (or a different pair altogether) It could also turn out that they're not broken, but it's better to be safe then sorry.

If anyone can message me the links to some professional bass tests, it would be appreciated. I've been looking for the past half an hour, and I couldn't find many to use.
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