Can it damage my headphones?
Jun 15, 2017 at 12:02 AM Post #16 of 21
Eh, I feel like my headphones (Ultrasone PRO 900) has a little messy\shivering bass. can it happen (judging from what I described up there) or is it just in my head?
This is my first day with those cans.

"Shivering" is a little confusing here, mostly because, as vague as qualitative descriptors go, this is the first time anybody has chosen that word to describe anything. I mean in literal terms "shivering" means somebody's shaking and saying, "I'm c-c-c-c-c-cold, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Is your headphone producing bass sounds with a background noise that sounds like "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?" Again that can be hard to diagnose as to whether

1) It's just all the bass rattling something in the chassis, the same way that the bass from a subwoofer can vibrate the body of a car, like in this vid (just not as extreme, obviously, but this is the best way to illustrate it).


2) Your headphone drivers hitting their excursion limits, which is what my mini desktop speakers did just now when I played that vid (on top of which, the vid includes the sound of flexing metal)

3) Your amp clipping, which can only be determined if it's just the amp falling short if you try a more powerful amp (with comparable if not lower THD and higher voltage swing along with the higher output) and see if it's still there at that output level. Which can be tricky if you don't have a mic, ex if you use a DAC-HPamp, and the DAC stage outputs a different voltage, etc.

Regardless of which one it is, the best way to avoid all these is to turn the music down. What you need to do is otherwise determine that nothing is actually lose in there. You can't do anything about thin plastic that flexes at higher decibel levels, but if if you shake the headphone and hear rattling, that's something up for a warranty exchange or repair.
 
Jun 15, 2017 at 5:16 PM Post #17 of 21
Perhaps I wasn't spelling it right. when I say shivering I mean a non-clean bass. a feels of "dirtiness".
I don't know if it was before those "full volume testings" I did.
 
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Jun 16, 2017 at 12:00 AM Post #18 of 21
Perhaps I wasn't spelling it right. when I say shivering I mean a non-clean bass. a feels of "dirtiness".

Doesn't make it any clearer than "shivering." It tells us there's a sound that shouldn't be there, but what exactly?

Is it flabby bass that makes the "dumm, da, da, dum, dum, da-duuuummm" of double bass plucking on jazz sound more like the ghetto-shaking "BOOOOOOOMBWAAABWAAAABWWWUUUUUUUUMBWAAAABWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMM!!!" of a Lil Jon track?

Is there something that sounds like rattling?

Is there static?

Or is it hitting its excursion limits where every loud bass note doesn't just cleanly go, "bwwwooooooooom! bwooooooooommm!!!" but instead goes "bwwwooooooooom! *thwack! bwooooooooommm!!! *thwack!!!"
 

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