help - noise occurs in certain vocal passages

[cil]

Hi, I recently start to use Sennheiser HD600 and HD580 with Cary 300sei and Rega Apollo. Previously I didn't use the headphone section much.

I notice when I am listening to Norah Jones' "Come away with me" or Diana Krall's "The Look of Love" (especially in "Cry Me a river"), in certain passages when the singers sang louder than other passages, I will hear some noise (static) for less than a second in both channels. the noise is not loud but it is annoying. Before when I was using speakers, I didn't notice this issue.

I heard the noise from both HD600 and HD580, and I also tried with both Rega Apollo and an external DAC and I heard the noise too.

I searched this forum a bit and found some suggestion on power, so I tried plugging the amp directly to outlet now but it doesn't help as well.

May I ask if there is an issue with the amp... or the CDs?

Thanks.

cil

 

[cil]

can anyone help or make any suggestion?

Thanks.

cil

 

[Tridacnid]

Ever consider that the noise is actually part of the recording? Perhaps the microphone distorted a little when she sang louder.

 

[cil]

Yes I consider that too. unfortunately I don't have other headphone amp to test out. the other thing I tried was to play the same songs/CD in my living room mid-fi stereo speaker system and didn't hear the noise.

thanks.

cil

 

[Oskari]

I don't think that there is anything wrong with your equipment. I blame the CDs. The mistakes are just easier to hear with headphones and a revealing system. That Diana Krall CD is particularly bad. I've attached the waveform of the track mentioned as displayed by Audacity with "show clipping" selected. That's the red bars. Some very audible excrement there! The loudness war is just sad.

 

[Zombie_X]

I have this happen to me on my PC > X-Can V8P DAC when I output audio through VLC Player. I get high distortion at higher frequencies, but when I use WMP, there is absolutely no distortion. Odd...