[stalepie]

I've noticed on Beyer headphones their power handling capacity is lower than some other brands (such as Sony's studio monitors). For instance, the DT 880 Pro (250 Ohms) and the DT 1350 are rated at only 100 mW, while the MDR-V6 is 1 W and the MDR-7550 (an IEM) is 500 mW.

Since a lot of amps put out a lot more power than this, doesn't one need to be concerned about accidentally turning the dial too high? (such as when they are not on your head). What are the signs of having damaged your headphones this way and is it something that can be fixed?

 

[castleofargh]

ideally we'd like conditions for the power handling value. numbers without specifying how they were obtained are kind of meaningless. in this case there is nothing telling us if both brands use the same conditions when testing their gears. for some the value might be related to the coil melting, but how long does it take at that power? 0.5second? 3seconds? 5minutes in a hot room? using which kind of signal? maybe with typical music that isn't stuck to full scale you could spend a lifetime and not melt anything. specs without conditions aren't informative, you can only assume they follow a given standard, with very poor confidence.

but in general, yes one can ruin his headphone if the amp is powerful enough and the volume level set high enough. as for noticing damage, unless you kill them or have them sound clearly weird(buzzing, obvious distortions at moderate volume level) it might be hard to tell by ear. and right now you might be in paranoia mode after plugging a sensitive headphone with the volume a little high. but being unsure under such circumstances is IMO a good sign in itself.

 

[stalepie]

I thought I noticed a little rattling or tizziness in the highs, maybe moreso in the right driver, and I thought "the speaker sounds shot" (blown) - then I did get a little paranoid because I'd been swimming and deep diving earlier in the day to try to get glasses off the bottom of the lake, heh, and figured my ears were waterlogged. So I lent them to someone else to see what they thought and figured a few days away from it would maybe do good for a fresh listen next time to make a judgement.

But I'd remembered a couple days before I'd tested the bass on them with an online tone generator (Szynalski) and turned up the amp too high when doing that (to see if the speakers rattled and how different sources compared). I didn't do it very long (a few seconds, I think), but it made me think that may have been enough. Perhaps I can open it up and see if each side looks the same or maybe it's a matter of gluing something back in place..