[SunPie]

I accidentally played my ath m50s at full volume on my computer for 7 seconds. I have onboard audio but while I was fumbling to turn the volume down, the headphones were playing at speaker volume when I took it off. Could I have blown my drivers?

 

[german103]

Well how do they sound?

 

[SunPie]

Sound a bit distorted and quiter

 

[TMRaven]

I highly doubt 7 seconds from your computer's onboard audio would blow your headphones.

 

[SunPie]

After resting my ears, the headphones still feel quieter and i've probably screwed the cans over?

 

[SSandDigital]

  I highly doubt 7 seconds from your computer's onboard audio would blow your headphones.

 
Why?  It only takes one to do so.  That's like saying, to destroy your laptop you need to short circuit it for 10 seconds, takes less than a second...  Or saying you need 10 seconds of pushing on a glass to break, takes less than a second if impact is enough.  Headphones are both electrical and mechanical.  If enough power, I don't see why it would even take more than 1 second to blow out the diaphragm or detach the voice coil from the diaphragm etc.  How many seconds does it take for at full volume for voice coil to become damaged from overheating?  Also the laptop probably wasn't providing clean power either.  Maxed out distorted, bad power on very delicate diaphragm?  Why not in 7 seconds?  7 seconds is a long time to me pushing delicate diaphgram beyond what it was meant to with bad distorted amplification.

 

[TMRaven]

headphone drivers do have different power handling specs depending on the amount of sustained power being fed into them.  For instance, headphones like the audeze lcd-2 are rated at 15 watts of short-term power, with only a few watts of long-sustained power of minutes.
 
Beyond that, this isn't even a discussion of the duration.  A computer's onboard should even produce anywhere near the power to blow a full-sized headphone like the M50, which is rated at 1.6watts, which I assume is not sustained power.

 

[pbui44]

If you hear a very distant sound with little-to-no impact, then you have blown the drivers.

 

[SSandDigital]

Love your avatar, what a great episode.  Bob, where did you learn to fight like that?

 

[pbui44]

Yeah, I had this avatar for a while now and you are the first to post about it. *Sigh* everyone here prefers music over everything else. Social Distortion over Archer, they say.

Oh, and for the OP, if your drivers are really blown, send them back to AT (US office, hopefully) and they should cover the warranty.

 

[SunPie]

Impact?

 

[TMRaven]

If you lose lots of bass.

 

[pbui44]

  Impact?

If there is little or no air hitting your ear.  That means the diaphragm blew out and cannot hold the air making the bass impact.  

 

[Dogmatrix]

  If there is little or no air hitting your ear.  That means the diaphragm blew out and cannot hold the air making the bass impact.  

This is true , if the diaphragm is torn you will also get a buzz or rattle as you increase volume
If you blew the coil out of its slot the driver would make no sound at all
You may have popped the coil out momentarily and damaged it as it fell back in , this would cause a weakened response but you would hear the coil catching in the groove
Give it a while it may all settle back to normal