jbgarcia
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2015
- Posts
- 6
- Likes
- 10
I have Sennheiser HD 598 (original beige) headphones that I normally connect through my FiiO E07K DAC to my laptop. I play my music on Foobar2000. My laptop also has a built-in Sabre Hi-Fi DAC and a somewhat strong Texas Instruments amp, so one day I decided to try my headphones through the laptop's headphone jack. It sounded good, but I paused my music and decided to switch back to my DAC in the Foobar settings. Unfortunately I accidentally selected the Realtek Digital Output (which is defaulted to 100% volume in the Realtek application) option instead of my DAC without realizing it. I hadn't taken my headphones off, and I accidentally hit the play button and an explosion of super loud sound shot through my headphones and into my ears. I literally froze for a few seconds, then tried in vain to use my keyboard shortcuts to lower the volume, which had no effect because digital output volume can't be controlled that way. So after about 7-10 seconds I threw my headphones onto my bed like a madman, then almost 10 seconds later I finally got my head straight and paused Foobar. Anyway, after that I've had the feeling that the left side of my headphones sound a bit weaker, or that my headphones sound slightly off-balance. I also feel like the sound is a bit more "trebly" or tinny (not much, just slightly). Could that happen from 20 seconds of really loud max volume? Could it be that I am suffering from a bit of temporary (or god forbid, permanent) hearing damage in my left ear? Or is it just all in my head because I assume that my headphones would have suffered damage from such a dramatic surge in volume?
