[astroid]

Decided to make their portable cans practically impossible to drive from a DAP?
I had the PX200s, they were fine out of my IPod but the newer 228/238 and '4' series are terrible out of a DAP even my cowon has issues with them.
Someone must have thought that was a bad idea during testing surely!

 

[CodeScripted]

Cool bro!  Thanks for letting us know.
 

 

[Kevin Brown]

I have PX-100's, and I tried the II's and the HD-238's.  My Sansa Fuze didn't have a problem driving any of them.

 

[astroid]

My 228 and 448 struggle with my ipod touch and archos 32.

 

[dye1337]

I know some people are going to get cranky with me saying this, but none of the ipods I owned were able to drive anything well, not even IEMs

 

[dalethorn]

Decided to make their portable cans practically impossible to drive from a DAP?
I had the PX200s, they were fine out of my IPod but the newer 228/238 and '4' series are terrible out of a DAP even my cowon has issues with them.
Someone must have thought that was a bad idea during testing surely!

Any ideas why that might be? Are they just as inefficient from an amp, or something peculiar to iPods etc.?

 

[wind016]

Really? How bad are the differences? I didn't get a long audition, just a short one in the noisy Apple store, but I got reasonable volume from the Sennheiser 228/238s at least. They also sounded better than anything else in the Apple store, though it's not saying much.
 
PS. I want to shave your mustache.

 

[vroum]

Quote:

[...] the newer 228/238 and '4' series are terrible out of a DAP even my cowon has issues with them.
Someone must have thought that was a bad idea during testing surely!

Hello,
 
I'm using the HD 228 headphones on a daily basis since they were made available on the market in May 2010.
 
I have no trouble at all to drive them with my iPod touch 2nd gen, nor my iPhone 4. They do an excellent to block the external sounds when I ride on the subway. I get plenty of bass while the volume is at a reasonable level (~ 50% - 60%)
 
Maybe you got a "Made-on-a-Friday-afternoon" unit?
 
Cheers,

 

[astroid]

I dont think i got duff ones, if you google hd228 or 238 with amp or quiet there are loads of others who agree. An ipod doesnt drive them well.
 
some quotes
 
So, I got the 238's and am fairly happy with them. Need a headphone amp now tho, these puppies are hard to drive. Even my netbooks output wont go loud enough

and my phones output is limited as well with these.
 
Just got a Sennheiser HD 228 for my 4 weeks old Cowon S9. Strange enough the loudness is verry soft even when the volume is put on 100 procent loud.
 
I plugged the HD 228 headphones in and right away I noticed a problem. The sound was so quiet I could barely hear it. I tested my other headphones (HD280 pro, portapro, koss KSC75, worthless earbuds that came with a lame ipod) and all of them produced much more voluminous sound from the same source.

 

[Kevin Brown]

Something's funky because there are obviously people here who aren't having a problem.  QC at Sennheiser?  And I know that the jack on my Sansa Fuze can be a little picky.  The wierd thing being: it's never had a problem with any of the Senn's I've directly plugged into it, but I have a few 1/4" to 1/8" adapters, and none of those play well with my player.

 

[Deep Funk]

It is not just a  Sennheiser thing. With an amplifier like the E5 my HD428 sounded slightly better but I preferred the less warm presentation without E5. I will admit the E5 is not much of an amplifier but it works.
 
The Panasonic RP-HTX7 sounded veiled without amplifier but even out of my E5 the overall clarity improved a lot. 
 
My source was either my phone or my Clip +.
 
Some low impedance headphones just need more power imput. My Pioneer Monitor 10R is one such headphone. 

 

[priest]

No problem whatsoever driving any of those headphones from any of my portable players, including my iPod touch, so I'm not exactly sure what the issue is.
 
p.s., I should have mentioned that I listen at no more than what I consider to be the top range of safe listening, and that this is near the top of the volume range on my players with these headphones. So I think this is really just a debate about how loud people can safely listen to music.

 

[wind016]

I had no problems with a Cowon nor an Ipod when I auditioned them. I don't know how loud you're listening. The Apple store even demos them straight through Ipods

 

[Wildstar]

Don't know exactly what's happening, maybe it's manufacturer tolerances, but my HD238s are just a bit more sensitive than my KSC75s. Just tried it, had to set the volume control 10% higher to get the same SPL (roughly).