[Doubly Dead]

I have the KRK KNS-6400, and the sound is very strange and distorted. The headphones were plugged into my laptop, and I had to restart the laptop to install the sound card. When the laptop started up, the volume levels shifted from what I placed them to a volume so loud that I could distinctly hear the laptop startup noises even though I didn't have my headphones on, as if they were coming from speakers. The volume for my headphones are extremely soft, and the instrumentals sound decent, but the vocals are very difficult to hear. And when they are heard, they sound distorted with a lot of reverb; there's a constant hiss. It sounds like the headphones aren't fully plugged in. I originally chalked this up as a headphone jack problem for my laptop, but then I tried it with my Iphone and Ipod, and I compared it to the sounds of an IEM I owned, and the IEMs sounded fine while the headphones sounded consistently distorted. I'm very careful with my headphones, and I listen to them at a fairly quiet volume, but they couldn't have been blown from that single instant of laptop startup noise, could it?

 

[bigshot]

Try another set of headphones. I don't think an unamped laptop could blow out headphones, even full blast.

 

[Doubly Dead]

  Try another set of headphones. I don't think an unamped laptop could blow out headphones, even full blast.

Currently, there's no other set of headphones I can use or even borrow. And I was thinking the exact same thing, that there's no way that such a brief burst of sound could blow out my headphones, but I still can't get a decent sound out of them from either the laptop or Iphone. After meddling with it, it sounds all right with the Ipod, but it has to be barely plugged in, which is weird because it was never like that before.

Edit: Also, I should have stated this before, but I have the Dell Inspiron 5537. Not too fancy. But the sound really is too loud. I'm using my IEMs right now to listen to music, and I had to adjust the volume to 1/100 with my music player playing at half its volume. Albeit, I have sensitive ears.

 

[vertical]

Are you using a cable with a mute or microphone built in? If so, try a straight cable with the PC.

 

[Doubly Dead]

Are you using a cable with a mute or microphone built in? If so, try a straight cable with the PC.

No, the cable doesn't have a mute or microphone built in. It's a straight cable connected directly to the PC.

 

[Doubly Dead]

This must seem like a lame thing to reply with, but I think my headphones are fine. One of my roommates recently came back from a trip, so I tested out my headphones on his laptop. It took a lot of wriggling, and it could never comfortably rest in the jack without my hand on it, but the sound was fine for my cans. I don't know why my laptop jack won't allow my headphones to get a proper sound of it no matter how much I try, but I plan on getting an external sound card anyways, since there's a constant hiss from the cheap hardware. I'm an idiot. :|

 

[CognitiveBiased]

Well if you couldn't plug the headphones properly in his laptop aux jack without holding/wriggling it in place, maybe the fault IS with the contact? And if really you had this problem on all your audio devices, it seems to point by exclusion to your headphone's cable or its connector as the faulty part. 

 

[Doubly Dead]

Well, maybe. I wasn't sure about it because even when I first got them, my headphones required some wriggling to get a good sound out of them on my old laptop, although I didn't need my hand on it the whole time. I just ignored it because it wasn't difficult to pull the cord out a little to get a good sound from it.