[Paranoid Android]

I sure as hell hope that's not the problem because it would explain the distortion I've been hearing from my MS-1's...

..And the bass disappearance on my old V600's..

 

[Ctn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Ctn, why do you attribute that to the card?

Just an assumption.
I bought the 590, played a few concert unplugged dvds and within a few days it started to distort in the high frequencies. Mind you the salesperson couldnt hear the distortions I was hearing. He was telling me its normal. I took it back and got it exchanged. As a precaution, I got a cheap amp (which needed some minor DIY repairs) to go with it.

 

[Tim D]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Well, I'm certainly not one, but the Creative definately has many of them. The line out is also spec'd as a headphone out. They also sell Headphones as recommended products to go with the cards. If the cards on their own were likely to have problems with destroying headphones they would do one of two things: 1)Add a cheap headphone amp/jack 2)not advertise it as a headphone out since doing so makes them liable if the card blows out/ruins the headphone. Ctn, why do you attribute that to the card?

Not necessarily true. If for example this damage only occurs on power-up or shut-down or because of poor computer power-supply, etc. they can easily shift blame to other components. I don't know if the claims are true but I would not be surprised since I know there were very badly behaving soundcards/Computer audio components in the past.

And there is also the issue where most people typically do not plug in audiophile grade phones straight into their soundcards, and as such you would never find anyone really caring if they blew their $20 dollar headphones and would most likely shrug it off and blame the headphones.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim D And there is also the issue where most people typically do not plug in audiophile grade phones straight into their soundcards, and as such you would never find anyone really caring if they blew their $20 dollar headphones and would most likely shrug it off and blame the headphones.

Have a look at the Creative site, they sell Sennheiser... Granted they only sell up to the 497, but your average consumer would be pissed if their expensive as hell (in their opinion) 497 got messed up by the card.

 

[Tim D]

Well the "average consumer" would not know if their card ruined their headphones or not.

The fact that Creative has "engineers" really means nothing regardless of them selling headphones or not.

Ford had engineers yet they still produced the Pinto after studies showing it was a deadly fiery rear-end explosion waiting to happen.

I'd say Creative would be willing to tout that their soundcards work well with headphones in marketing and sales, at the 1% risk of damage (that is also contributed by other parts of the computer, i.e. powersupply), and a 1% risk of consumer actually being able to lay blame on top of that.

There are a lot of underpowered amps that can cause damaged when poorly matched with headphones/speakers. There are also DIY amps that can cause damage to headphones due to user error as well that can be argued to be a design fault (user error or design fault...i.e. Mcdonalds hot coffee?).

Finally as an engineer-type that is working with public safety...engineers do tend to know what technically works right and what doesn't, what is safe, what is not, what is "good" and what is "bad"...and sometimes it is entirely irrelevant.

 

[Jasper994]

<shrug> the point was really that the people in question were randomly pointing their finger at the soundcard as the problem when it could have been a defective can or as you say a problem with the powersupply or for that matter user error like stepping on the headphone cord and damaging it creating a short... whatever. Either way, they had no proof it was the card and no particular reason to blame the card. OTOH the card is supposed to be able to be used to drive headphones (granted just about everything Creative says is stretching the truth as far as it can be stretched). There are many people who use headphones straight out of their Creative card every day without any problems, my step-father being one of them.

A couple of people have problems with their headphones and you immediately say "oh the card blew them out" or believe it because some old soundcards had issues? What?!? If I said they put crack in cigarettes to make them more addictive would you believe that too? Or how about if I told you my stock Toyota Echo goes 0-60mph in 3 seconds? Yeah, okay you could put crack in a cigarette and it would be more addictive, and you could make my Echo go 0-60 in 3 seconds (if you strapped it to a Acme rocket or aircraft carrier catapult) but does that make it true for every cigarette or Echo? Hell no! Maybe the soundcard is at fault, but where's the proof? If you find proof, is it one defective card? or is it a design flaw?

 

[tortie]

For more than a month, I had plugged my cans straight into the soundcard and in my case did not experience any trouble with it. The only cause of problems I can think of for an unamped setup is if you keep on playing the cans loud even when the cans starts to distort.

I know this has happend a few times in car speakers. The speakers were more susceptible to damage by being played out loud while being underpowered as opposed to being overpowered.

 

[D-EJ915]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Distroyed So do we have any electrical engineers here who can definitively say whether their claims are accurate or not?

Clipping (Square waves) will destroy speaker cones (or tweeters or headphones), but you probably won't get that from the output, I'm not sure, but you don't want Square waves O_O NO NO NO NO NO....

 

[Tim D]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 <shrug> the point was really that the people in question were randomly pointing their finger at the soundcard as the problem when it could have been a defective can or as you say a problem with the powersupply or for that matter user error like stepping on the headphone cord and damaging it creating a short... whatever. Either way, they had no proof it was the card and no particular reason to blame the card. OTOH the card is supposed to be able to be used to drive headphones (granted just about everything Creative says is stretching the truth as far as it can be stretched). There are many people who use headphones straight out of their Creative card every day without any problems, my step-father being one of them. A couple of people have problems with their headphones and you immediately say "oh the card blew them out" or believe it because some old soundcards had issues? What?!? If I said they put crack in cigarettes to make them more addictive would you believe that too? Or how about if I told you my stock Toyota Echo goes 0-60mph in 3 seconds? Yeah, okay you could put crack in a cigarette and it would be more addictive, and you could make my Echo go 0-60 in 3 seconds (if you strapped it to a Acme rocket or aircraft carrier catapult) but does that make it true for every cigarette or Echo? Hell no! Maybe the soundcard is at fault, but where's the proof? If you find proof, is it one defective card? or is it a design flaw?

Where did I say it was or wasn't to blame? Where did I not acknowledge that this issue is a minority circumstance. I just said engineers or the selling of headphones has nothing to do with the possibility of a company putting out a product that can potentially harm a small percentage of headphones, with a small percentage of liability. Your first claims seem to say that a company would never do such a thing because they have "engineers" and would be far too liable. My only point is companies calculate just how liable they really are, and weigh it against profits. The Creative think tank is not going to sit around and say "oh noes, we might harm a small percentage of peoples headphones, and thus cause some rare internet discussions to appear on hobbyist websites that most of our customers will never end up reading...lets do the right thing and make our product perfect with all headphones under all circumstances!"

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim D Where did I say it was or wasn't to blame? Where did I not acknowledge that this issue is a minority circumstance. I just said engineers or the selling of headphones has nothing to do with the possibility of a company putting out a product that can potentially harm a small percentage of headphones, with a small percentage of liability. Your first claims seem to say that a company would never do such a thing because they have "engineers" and would be far too liable. My only point is companies calculate just how liable they really are, and weigh it against profits. The Creative think tank is not going to sit around and say "oh noes, we might harm a small percentage of peoples headphones, and thus cause some rare internet discussions to appear on hobbyist websites that most of our customers will never end up reading...lets do the right thing and make our product perfect with all headphones under all circumstances!"

Exactly, they aren't going to concern themselves with it if the incidence rate is very low. Why? because it's probably not anything to do with the card if the incidence rate is that low. If one or two cans crap out from use with the card it can be attributed to the individual card as a lemon, the headphone itself or user error. That's the thing though, not every headphone craps out from being used with a Creative card and certainly not every 580 and 590. So why are we attributing it to being the cards fault? Nobody has brought forth proof that the card was at fault in the first place. My point was that they (the engineers at Creative) would acknowledge if it was across the board a problem, but it's not.

If you're trying to say they sat there and said "well there will likely be a problem because part abc may cause headphone xyz to distort or short out but it will only happen in 1% of the situations where they are paired together." you might be right. You have to ask youself, who's really at fault in this picture? Well since it's not happening across the board is it the headphone itself being built with low tollerance levels? Is it the card that's causing this or that problem? or is the user doing some particular thing that causes the problem? Well, if it's the headphone, even if Creative knew about it in the first place, is it their responsibility to account for those random headphones that have low enough tollerance levels as to cause a conflict with the card? No, not really. If it's something to do with the card itself, why isn't it happening across the board? If it's the user? obviously it's not happening across the board so should Creative be held accountable for 1% of users the do whatever it is that causes the problem with the two things paired together? again, no!

The company should be responsible to test the item in question to the extent that it is reasonable. In the case of something that could potentially cost someone their life, the testing level should be pretty high. Still, they can't account for every possibility. In the case of headphones and soundcards, we've heard so far of what 2 headphones that have had issues with being run on Creative cards and we still have no proof that it was even the fault of the card. At this incidence rate how can we attribute it to the card? It could be any random thing.

 

[Bluestreak]

I wouldn't expect Creative to include a warning on their sound cards that says something along the lines of:

"Oh by the way, don't plug your 300 dollar headphones directly into our headphone out, or our high quality sound cards will blow it to crap."

The only thing that I need to know for certain is whether higher quality headphones being blown by direct connections to these sound cards, or any card for that matter is an anomaly, or something that is guaranteed to happen as the thread I linked seemed to indicate. If that's true, then it would seem all the high impedance headphone owners who happily plugged their cans into their PCs without an amp are now royally screwed.

Like I said, I'm not convinced but it royally pisses me off, and not just because a real issue like this could be mentioned nonchalantly on some old thread, but now it's got me paranoid. Hey that distortion I'm hearing? Is it due to badly compressed MP3s? Maybe the volume's too high? Maybe I need an amp? Maybe my sound card just sucks? Or maybe my headphones got blown because somehow I was supposed to know that sticking a can even as relatively low impedance as the HD590 directly into a sound card is akin to sticking a metal fork into an electrical outlet with your bare hands.

But I'm not worried, my cans sound just fine. I think....

BTW, I read the artcle on clipping, but it didnt go into much detail as to what it actually SOUNDS like. I simply have no point of reference for hearing clipping. What would it sound like? Is it subtle, or would you know right away something's off?

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluestreak I wouldn't expect Creative to include a warning on their sound cards that says something along the lines of: "Oh by the way, don't plug your 300 dollar headphones directly into our headphone out, or our high quality sound cards will blow it to crap." The only thing that I need to know for certain is whether higher quality headphones being blown by direct connections to these sound cards, or any card for that matter is an anomaly, or something that is guaranteed to happen as the thread I linked seemed to indicate. If that's true, then it would seem all the high impedance headphone owners who happily plugged their cans into their PCs without an amp are now royally screwed. Like I said, I'm not convinced but it royally pisses me off, and not just because a real issue like this could be mentioned nonchalantly on some old thread, but now it's got me paranoid. Hey that distortion I'm hearing? Is it due to badly compressed MP3s? Maybe the volume's too high? Maybe I need an amp? Maybe my sound card just sucks? Or maybe my headphones got blown because somehow I was supposed to know that sticking a can even as relatively low impedance as the HD590 directly into a sound card is akin to sticking a metal fork into an electrical outlet with your bare hands. But I'm not worried, my cans sound just fine. I think.... BTW, I read the artcle on clipping, but it didnt go into much detail as to what it actually SOUNDS like. I simply have no point of reference for hearing clipping. What would it sound like? Is it subtle, or would you know right away something's off?

It's an anomoly, I've known several people, myself included who have plugged expensive headphones directly into Creative cards without problems. Why would it be limited to happening with only expensive headphones anyway?

People like to sensationalize, that's all. Particularly when something goes wrong. We tend to be quick to point figures as well. For what it's worth, if it were true, don't you think some amp makers would have picked up on this and used it as a marketing technique? Don't you think we'd be hearing about it all the time? Particularly when things go wrong, word of mouth spread quickly. Take this thread for example. Even though I don't buy into the idea that the card is the problem, if I noticed a trend, I'd change my mind and at least hold is suspect. If either the card or the headphone were new, I'd hold it suspect and wait for other reports, but neither are new so what more can this be but an anomoly.

I would, however, highly recommend that you upgrade soundcards and invest in an amp on the basis of sound quality though...

 

[Budley007]

I can't comment on the Audigy's ability to blow out headphones, but I had a near miss once with my Echo Indigo. I was screwing around with Foobar and decided to give "floating point" a go, (even though it said it couldn't do anything but "fixed point"). Man! big mistake. My Grados started "screaming" at me. I'm talking louder than any gain I could have run up under normal conditions. As a matter of fact, it was the loudest I ever heard anything come out of those headphones on either my laptop or home system.

This leads me to believe that it would be possible under extremely remote circumstances that a relatively "safe" signal can be turned into some kind of "signal from hell" that would blow out a driver. I may be wrong, but it was one experience I will not venture to repeat. Whether it relates to this guys Audigy experience, I dunno. I just thought it might be remotely possible.

edit: PS, the Grados are fine. I managed to have my thumb on the volumn knob when it happened. Apprently it was the only smart thing I was doing at the time.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Budley007 I can't comment on the Audigy's ability to blow out headphones, but I had a near miss once with my Echo Indigo. I was screwing around with Foobar and decided to give "floating point" a go, (even though it said it couldn't do anything but "fixed point"). Man! big mistake. My Grados started "screaming" at me. I'm talking louder than any gain I could have run up under normal conditions. As a matter of fact, it was the loudest I ever heard anything come out of those headphones on either my laptop or home system. This leads me to believe that it would be possible under extremely remote circumstances that a relatively "safe" signal can be turned into some kind of "signal from hell" that would blow out a driver. I may be wrong, but it was one experience I will not venture to repeat. Whether it relates to this guys Audigy experience, I dunno. I just thought it might be remotely possible. edit: PS, the Grados are fine. I managed to have my thumb on the volumn knob when it happened. Apprently it was the only smart thing I was doing at the time.

This would fall under the category of user error and you can't blame the soundcard manufacturer for it.

-EDIT-

I know you're not, I'm just pointing this out as this would me a much more likely scenario for why a soundcard might damage a headphone.

 

[Budley007]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 This would fall under the category of user error and you can't blame the soundcard manufacturer for it. -EDIT- I know you're not, I'm just pointing this out as this would me a much more likely scenario for why a soundcard might damage a headphone.

Yup! I was being an idiot. I only wanted to convey my story in relation to the fact that even if your cans can handle maximum gain from a source. There's more in there somewhere under the right circumstances. I'll shutup.