[QyababAM]

Hello head-fi-ers!

I bought Etymotic ER3SE IEM-s in October 2019 directly from Amazon and was very satisfied with the detail level and sound quality. However, recently I noticed that when I listen to music on my Galaxy S6 the left channel sounds distorted with certain frequencies (one day when listening to Rick Ross's "Vegas Residency", the entire bassline sounded distorted, the other day it was just fine. Same with the Enya's "Carribean Blue" contrabass), but it happens occassionally and the amount of distortion varies from time to time. The weird thing is that when I listen to these with my ASUS Xonar U7 sound card, I didn't notice any distortion at all even with higher than comfortable listening volumes, whereas the distortion could easily happen at lower than normal listening volumes on the S6. I also did a quick test on my friends Note 8 and there was no distortion. The distortion may appear on a given song today but tomorrow the same song may be just fine at any volume. Filters are new and clean. I use foobar2000 for FLAC files with resampler enabled and Deezer.
I did email Etymotic support about this issue and their reply was:
"We do have repair options for the product, the form you would need to fill out is provided below" and they sent me the warranty form link.
Etymotic's site lists this "rattling" as a common issue, which seens like is covered by the warranty, but the randomnicity of this issue, which yet happened only on my S6 makes me question. What are the chances of my S6 dac/amp or any other internal being bad or is the headphone bad by itself?

 

[Chris Kaoss]

The only way to figure out what's happen is to plug another sensitive iem to your smartphone.
Maybe it's a ba problem located at etymotic.
Have you tried another smartphone to be sure?

 

[QyababAM]

The only way to figure out what's happen is to plug another sensitive iem to your smartphone.
Maybe it's a ba problem located at etymotic.
Have you tried another smartphone to be sure?

Unfortunately I have no other IEM's available to test at this point. I also have HD598 which is fine but is dynamic driver.
Etymotic's website says:

Distortion or Crackling
This issue usually requires users to return earphones and headsets to Etymotic's service facility.

I will try to play with as many sources as possible to do my best at troubleshooting before returning them.

 

[Chris Kaoss]

Looking forward to your results.

I'm heading for the Er2xr, btw.

 

[QyababAM]

Looking forward to your results.

I'm heading for the Er2xr, btw.

Nice choice! Although SR is really easy to listen to, I know these are not the same model but still the XR version should really help compensate the etymotic's signature slight lack of midbass and slighthly bright highs.
Will keep updated on the situation!

 

[castleofargh]

From your explanation, the culprit seems to be the S6 for some reason. The more time you spend using other devices to feed that IEM without getting the issue, the more likely it becomes that the S6 is the problem and not the IEM.
The first thing I would look up is if you have some sound enhancements on the phone(general options maybe, or inside whatever player app you're using) and if changing those settings has a direct impact on those distortions. Maybe something is massively boosting some frequencies and either clips the signal, or reveals an issue with the driver when pushing that frequency too much. The fact that listening loudly on something else made you notice no distortion doesn't totally exclude the possibility of a driver issue, but it certainly seems to reduces the likelihood of it.

Try to look for audio settings to tweak, when you do get the distortion, check if going in flight mode changes something(wouldn't be the first time). if you have some apps that could mess up with audio (a friend had issues with ACR), try removing them and wait to see if the distortions come back anyway. I can't really think of much more to do for diagnosis but I might be missing some important steps.

If you can't find an obvious culprit, you probably still should send the IEM back so they can check it.

 

[QyababAM]

From your explanation, the culprit seems to be the S6 for some reason. The more time you spend using other devices to feed that IEM without getting the issue, the more likely it becomes that the S6 is the problem and not the IEM.
The first thing I would look up is if you have some sound enhancements on the phone(general options maybe, or inside whatever player app you're using) and if changing those settings has a direct impact on those distortions. Maybe something is massively boosting some frequencies and either clips the signal, or reveals an issue with the driver when pushing that frequency too much. The fact that listening loudly on something else made you notice no distortion doesn't totally exclude the possibility of a driver issue, but it certainly seems to reduces the likelihood of it.

Try to look for audio settings to tweak, when you do get the distortion, check if going in flight mode changes something(wouldn't be the first time). if you have some apps that could mess up with audio (a friend had issues with ACR), try removing them and wait to see if the distortions come back anyway. I can't really think of much more to do for diagnosis but I might be missing some important steps.

If you can't find an obvious culprit, you probably still should send the IEM back so they can check it.

Thank you for your informative answer!
I bought these with the intention to use no EQ at all. Only once I tried adding from +3 to +5 at most on 55hz in Foobar2000 android version. Also I am using 96khz resampler. Other than that I use Deezer with no EQ at all (Sometimes, but rarely I do toggle the Samsung's UHQ upscaler). I also used Samsung Music and FiiO Music apps several times (Same or no EQ settings). On my desktop I use the Xonar U7 with no EQ at all with the headphone settings set at low gain (-12dB for <32 Ohms). These are the two sources that drive these IEM's 99.9% of the time. Also I think it is worth mentioning the fact, that during a regular voice call the IEM's produced most distortions but that was also occasional. Today I almost haven't noticed any distortions. The only thing I noticed was back vocal of a song (skeler-1992) had some minor distortions in it but that was the quietest sound in the song and it was 128kbps mp3 so I think it had to do with the quality of the recording.