It really depends on what you want to do. I'd suggest getting a scrap of protoboard, some cheap copper wire, and learning to solder first.   I tend to favour canare starquad or its 2 stranded sibling for wiring - its good, honest copper, solder sticks to it well, and its not too expensive...

well, the only time i had a 3.5mm jack break * , it was a plastic encased jack, and i dropped a laptop on it (a thinkpad, the laptop was fine, a wire inside it broke). Otoh, i've had nicked cables, cables coming loose from the transducers, and with full sized headphones, plastic fatigue. Under...

the 'large' channel imbalance was mainly at low volumes, with low impedance headphones or earbuds apparently - its impossible to replicate with my ATH M50 for example   Nwavguy did get banned from here, but he's still blogging - currently about the amplifier he designed, and on hydrogen...

@dabomb : That's the advantage with kickstarter - they can get the funding they need to mass produce it with a production partner who can produce it en mass, and actual production would be by someone else . The guy who designed this seems to have worked with Henry Kloss according to the kick...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendary/earbuds-time-to-change-the-status-quo   Apparently someone's trying to design an extremely modular, almost indestructible pair of headphones. gratuitous connectors aside, some aspects of the design are interesting - almost all the cables are...

Starquad is a dream to solder, and has some pretty nice qualities for a newbie - it 'sucks' up solder, making it easy to tin. I'd also suggest some heatshrink over each lead on the plug end, and some over the cable as a whole for strain relief ...

nailpolish remover? dang... i should give that a shot if i can find any of the old cable i had lying around for experiments. I'm a fan of microtorches for that, personally, but that's also my inner pyro talking ;)

Well, from what i've seen that's usually the case with stock cables- ground is always 'natural' copper coloured (but still with that annoying insulating coating) and there's always two, right up to the jack (which is what makes 'balanced' termination possible) , and right is red - this has been...

yup. there's even a handy dandy guide on instructables which i did on the whole process! Its only as hard as brain surgery without the brains. but with a soldering iron. I'm actually embarassed on how many times i've linked that guide.

well, last time i repaired one cost me 2 dollars or so in parts. *even* if you did a full recable with good (not uberfancy) cable and plug, it'd cost nowhere near $200 - even if you got someone else to do it. - i think you can do it for under 10 dollars worth of cable, and a jack of your choice.

You can replace the cable - if its on the plug end, its as simple as chopping it off. removing the insulation on the wire, if any, and soldering on a new pair. If its on the headphone end, its a little more involved. It would be about 10 minutes work if you can solder, at most.

assuming they use the same basic sort of plug and wire that many other sennheisers do , this might help - its for a fullsize but there's a few small tricks that would be of use   

switching to bbcode does it for me. Still, rather dissapointing QA from whoever wrote the platform ><

I do suspect i'm flagellating a deceased equine... and some of these i've probably pointed out before but...   Quote: A problem that seems to be quite the bit more obvious with IEMs - which tend to be far more sensitive than full sized headphones. Maybe a fairer thing to say is "The...

if you didn't notice, i would suppose, least on the short term, the damage isn't too bad.  Wierdly i can't find any reference to how its supposed to sound like.

They are absolutely magnets, and VERY strong ones at that. It partially depends on how disassembled the headphones were and where it fell. The 'driver' is a coil connected to a very thin diaphram over a magnet - neodymnium in many good headphones. if the screw dropped on this diaphram, it would...

M50s don't work well with the fiio e3 - in my experience it overemphasises the bass, and seriously quietens down the vocals (there's some situations where the e3 works well, just not here) not sure about the e3 tho- but from most reports with a *decent* amp, they sound better - kicks up an...

Just something i've been curious about. Most of the knowledge i have of circuits i have is in the DC domain, so any EEEs please forgive any gross errors i make. In addition, for the most part, i'm a full sized headphone user, who has never really needed to use one of these devices   As i...

Most laptops have the same basic sound cards, so, chances are it won't be a huge difference - that said, the sound card on my thinkpad had a little more volume, and sound quality than my desktop integrated card, but it isn't quite a night and day thing - if you're worried about sound quality...

I keep mine at about 9 o'clock, and keep the computer and media player volumes on full...  if its only in certain songs, it might be be the recording. Load up the song in audacity and see ;p

I don't notice any on mine (though i had to turn my music player WAAAY down when i did it). is the static while you turn the knob, or in general? I'm using a ATH M50 + foobar2k with WSAPI (though i didn't notice it on DS either), and of course, a udac2.

the older version of the fastrack has the same specs, and you can get it for about 99 dollars as part of one of the maudio essentials kits. Its still above budget for what the original poster has in mind tho

well, its suprisingly simple - you'll need a cassette recorder with a line in (so, not a walkman, but there's similar models with line ins) a source, and a cable to connect the two. make a playlist, play that, hit record... and check for clipping. If it clips, lower the volume.  

if it was on the plug side its easy - the headphone side is trickier - On the positive side, those headphones are single ended and you don't need to futz with working out how to do a Y joints - you'd need to open it up, work out which lead is which (multimeter to the connection and plug helps)...

if it was on the plug side its easy - the headphone side is trickier - On the positive side, those headphones are single ended and you don't need to futz with working out how to do a Y joints - you'd need to open it up, work out which lead is which (multimeter to the connection and plug helps)...