Oh, you have the ATH-A900X (closed).  I was thinking of the ATH-AD900 (open). Your ATs have plenty of bass. I am a goose.   I found this youtube vid of the song that happens to have a little frequency bar graph overlaid. The volume starts to pick up at 4:20  ...

OK, that adds support to my thinking. Your good quality earbuds struggle with the same track that causes your HD598 to rattle. Both are struggling to reproduce the type of bass rumble on that track. You say your ATHA900Xs is not struggling on that track which is interesting. How well do you feel...

  While it is possible to blow a driver, in my case i was concerned that a screw / wire / driver had come loose and i was going to have to open up the headphone and glue it back in place. I have only had the rattle occur once and it was when i had overdone the bass so not really a fault of the...

My HD598 can handle loud volume as long as the bass is not at the stage where it rumbles. I assume rattling will occur at loud volume + tracks that have over-the-top bass, loud volume + films with earthquake effects and loud volume + bass boosted via EQ.  It's only a guess as I tend to turn down...

I bought the HD598 around the same time last year. I love it and had no issues until the day I recorded my bass guitar using a fuzz effect set to a very high level. The left ear cup loudly rattled on the low notes. I thought I had overdone it and caused either a screw, wire or driver to come...

Thanks Studio Sound !  Wow, I had no idea that the ideal impedance of the headphone output should be close to 0. I looked up the wiki article "headphone amplifier" and found that 120 Ohm is an old standard that has been kept. A Stereophile article "Between the ears" says that the standard is to...

Hi,   I listen to music on a HD598 through the headphone jack of a Marantz PM15S1 integrated and am happy with the sound (the headphone jack is resistored off the amp).   The impedance of the headphone jack is likely to be 120 Ohm. I interested in buying a DT880 so as to checkout the...

Thought I would bump this thread as I found it extremely educational. It is certainly worth spending the time reading through all the posts. Thanks to everyone who contributed.