Odd Grado Problem: single driver fades out after a few seconds of playing.
Feb 23, 2007 at 4:09 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 4

TeRrAPh0eNiX

100+ Head-Fier
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Posts
198
Likes
0
I posted this in the Headphones subforum about a month ago, and didn't get much in the way of replies, and since this is where i first learned of recabling headphones i've posted it here.

I recently recabled my Grado SR-125s with starquad to fix the inevitable disconnection of the original cable job in the Y-piece. Job went smooth, didn't fry anything, and they look and sound fantastic. (note: I recabled after the disconnection occurred, not before in hopes of preventing it from happening. i do have a brain.
smily_headphones1.gif
)

I've encountered a strange problem now, though: the left driver fades from normal volume to completely cutting out after playing anywhere from 5-10 seconds. The odd thing is that simply taking out the headphone plug from my source (mp3 player or laptop) and sticking it back in sometimes makes the left driver start playing again, but then it fades away again: same problem.

I'm wondering if anyone in the Headfi community has experienced anything like this. I've checked all the connections in the plug, the Y-split, the ground and signal cable solder job to the driver; i've taken out the driver and inspected it for tears or anything unusual, and nothing, no dice: everything i can see is normal.

any suggestions or comments?
smily_headphones1.gif
 
Feb 23, 2007 at 5:35 PM Post #2 of 4
That is a head scratcher indeed! Does moving the cable near the joints do anything or is it just the replugging that temp fixes it? It sounds like it happens with all sources..
Options in no particular order:
Have you reflowed the solder joints?

Recheck the connections at the plug. Perhaps move the left channel to the ring and the right to the tip and see if the probelm still exists (if possible without messing up the cable) If the fade is still in the left side, check the y-split and the left driver joints.

It may be possible a cut in the wire. If you have a DMM, check resistance between the plug and the connections at the drivers.
 
Feb 23, 2007 at 5:58 PM Post #3 of 4
Quote:

Originally Posted by TeRrAPh0eNiX /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I posted this in the Headphones subforum about a month ago, and didn't get much in the way of replies, and since this is where i first learned of recabling headphones i've posted it here.

I recently recabled my Grado SR-125s with starquad to fix the inevitable disconnection of the original cable job in the Y-piece. Job went smooth, didn't fry anything, and they look and sound fantastic. (note: I recabled after the disconnection occurred, not before in hopes of preventing it from happening. i do have a brain.
smily_headphones1.gif
)

I've encountered a strange problem now, though: the left driver fades from normal volume to completely cutting out after playing anywhere from 5-10 seconds. The odd thing is that simply taking out the headphone plug from my source (mp3 player or laptop) and sticking it back in sometimes makes the left driver start playing again, but then it fades away again: same problem.

I'm wondering if anyone in the Headfi community has experienced anything like this. I've checked all the connections in the plug, the Y-split, the ground and signal cable solder job to the driver; i've taken out the driver and inspected it for tears or anything unusual, and nothing, no dice: everything i can see is normal.

any suggestions or comments?
smily_headphones1.gif



An intermittent connection would not "fade out", as you describe. Typically, you would have a very noisy connection, that would cut in and out randomly.

One possibility is that you have a short from the left signal to ground, and your amplifier is protecting itself. Removing the phones allows the amp to recover. Have you ohmed out from signal to ground? It just seems very strange that the sound would fade out gradually.

Do you have any way to monitor the signal when this happens? It would be good to be able to separate the phones form the source. Even a volt meter to measure the AC signal would help.

Or, something in the phones may be heating up and opening, but I'm not sure what it would be.
 
Dec 26, 2016 at 9:15 PM Post #4 of 4
This old thread is the only one that I could find that deals with this wierd issue.
 
I have this same problem with my Beyerdynamics DT 250 - 80Ω.
 
They are behaving the same way that is described here, only in my case it's the right driver that fades away.
I don't own a dedicated headphone amp. I've used these headphones in a variety of different portable devices such as my Sony Xperia Z phone, ZOOM H4 portable recorder, my old sony minidisc player, laptop, desktop and played them from my ROTEL RA_820AX stereo amplifier.
 
On my Sony phone I can only get sound coming through the left driver no matter what but from my other sources they will play fine for a varied time before slovly fading out. The fading can take anything from 5 or 10 seconds to up to 20 minutes! For example sometimes when I'm watching a movie I'm thinking "hey, what have they done in the soundmixing, everything is higher volume in my left ear" This can go on for minutes before I realize i need to "reboot my headphones" I unplug and plug back in and everything is back to normal and the volume balance is in order again. Other times the sound quickly fades away in a matter of seconds. It's a perfectly even fade without any crackling or distortion. Simply like someone is slowly turning down the volume in one ear until it's silent.
 
It seems that the issue is more prominent on a portable device than on my desktop or on the Rotel amplifier. Still, a mysterious issue. Anyone have any idea on what is causing this you are more than welcome to share.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top