I hear a bit of distortion on my millet maxed...

So, I bought a Millet MAXed a week or so ago and had some issues with it that I thought were fixed, but now I'm not so sure.

I just got my HF-2s today and started listening to them and they sound pretty nice. Then I started to listen to the live version of Hotel California and from my left ear I could notice some distortion in the kick drum. Then I tried a different song and played the song a bit louder to see if I could hear distortion and again the left ear sounded a bit different and then all of the sudden...bam...no sound at all from the left ear.

Right before that happened I head a faint pop, the same sort of pop that I hear once the amp is ready to be used. I turned the amp off for around 5 minutes, turned it back on and sound came back to the left ear, but still with distortion.

I changed the tubes and still have the same issue.

At first I thought it was the HF-2s because I didnt hear distortion before with my PC-350's...but I guess its just the extra detail that the grado's have because once I started REALLY listening to the 350's, I could hear the distortion as well.

My question is...how do I troubleshoot the cause? I have only BASIC knowledge of the nuts and bolts of electronics and the furthest I've gone with a voltmeter is setting the gain on my car stereo amps.

Is it safe to assume that tube bias may be the issue here?

I bought it used/prebuilt from a member on the forum.

I've switched tubes entirely with a different set and have the same issue.

Any other ideas on what it could be?

Well, I'm sure if given some instructions I may be able to figure it out...unless I have to do soldering. I've never tried that and with my "fat fingers" I know I'll mess things up.

EDIT: Also, would this be considered a defect? Should I contact the seller and see what he says?

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So, it turns out its not the amp at all. :/

I plugged in both the Grados and the PC-350's directly to my DAC and out of the PC-350's, I could still hear faint distortion/clipping...but that very well could be the recording itself.

However, when I hooked up the HF-2's, I heard the same distortion/static PLUS an extra layer of flapping/farting type distortion coming out of the left driver every time the kick drum would hit. That, combined with the fact that the left driver actually turned OFF while I was listening is leading me in the direction of "bad driver".

I bought these headphones off the recent B-Stock sale and just got them today, so they are basically brand new. Is this something I need to send to the factory or TTVJ to get repaired?

Well, I definitely get your point about hearing different things and so on. But that doesn't really change the fact that the left driver just turned off while I was listening to music.

Also, when I first realized this problem I had only listened to 3 different songs or so. Now after listening to a variety of music, it's very apparent that the left driver is distorting on music that has a heavy kick drum or bass "impact". :-/

I'm not using a sound card, Im using a USB DAC which can drive the headphones themselves or connect to the amp. I tried the Grados and the 350's on both sources and can only reproduce the issue with the Grados. I've just connected the HF-2s to my X-fi and while it's not as prevalent as on the other sources, I can still hear the flapping/farting type sound coming only out of the left driver. I'm assuming it's not as prevalent since the X-fi doesn't put out as much juice and as much punch as the DAC and amp. The right driver is fine.

Re: Tube Bias...no, I have not done that yet. When I spoke with the seller he said he had them set at 13.5V before he shipped them but he recommended I double check after a week or two just to make sure. I just got the amp a week ago, so I have not double checked yet. I'll make sure to do that in the morning.

I was going to mention the first thread, but I didn't because that was 100% user error and I just wasn't using enough force to insert one of the tubes. Once I used the proper force, it was all good and has been all good since then.

Last point, while I haven't posted much on here and I'm new to head-fi, I'm pretty up to snuff on audio in general (mostly car audio) and am pretty confident I can tell the difference between clipping/distortion and a driver being over extended and/or blown.

The best way I can explain the sound is like this: Image you have a powerful amp (with gain properly set using test tones) connected to some mids and you forget to turn set your HPF to send the lows to your sub so the mids are getting low frequencies that it shouldn't be getting. Now, you turn on music with heavy bass impact (techno, rap, etc) and it sounds like the driver is about to pop.

That's an EXTREME of what the HF2s sound like to me, but its that same "type" of sound.