[James Dean]

Hello all,
 
Last night I had an unfortunate event with my system. The batteries were starting to go in the remote of my Yamaha HTR-6250 receiver, which I was using with an Arcam CD player and my HD600s. Anyway, I guess when I meant to increase the volume slightly using the remote the signal stuck because the batteries were going dead, and the volume starting climbing at a rapid pace, until reaching +8.00 on the receiver. I took the headphones off immediately and quickly scrambled for the volume knob to turn things back to normal.
 
Anyway, for the 10 or so seconds the music was blasting and the receiver was playing at its max, I head some scrambly garbage come out of the sens. This may be because the receiver was at its max and was clipping to the extreme. I did a bit of listening last night and the headphones seem O.K. though I may detect a (very) slight crackling signature I didn't pick up before.
 
What are the chances this event permanently messed the headphones? And is the slight and distant crackling on some instruments all in my head? Any input would be appreciated!

 

[TMRaven]

I'd assume it depends on how much power the receiver was feeding your headphones.  If it was within the headphone's power ratings, it shouldn't even come close to damaging.  The crackling might be coming from some recordings that already have clipping present in them.

 

[Clayton SF]

If you think that it is all in your head then perhaps you can get a second opinion from a fellow Sennheiser listener. Ask them to listen to the song or songs you feel have that distant crackling on some instruments. Or use your other headphone or the same model from a friend to listen and compare the same passages in the song that you suspect is crackling.

 

[lbj]

Clipping can damage headphones/speakers even if the power delivered is within their ratings.  Headphones and speakers are just as easily damaged by insufficient power as by too much power.
 

 

[desktophifi]

You can also listen to the same recording on a different source, to know if the problem its in your headphones. 

 

[NullZero]

Aha!  I've had this sort of worry many times, when my creative software would automatically increase the volume to 100% on my headphones (stupid driver software design you see).  Everytime this happened, I would think I was hearing something different in the headphones, and extra things that I did not hear before, simply because I was listening more intently to the sound than I normally do.
 
A possibility is that you are doing the same as stated above.  The other obvious possibility is that your equipment is damaged, so I wish you luck on that.

 

[Uncle Erik]

If they're still playing, they're probably fine.

Generally, headphones are damaged in two ways.

1. Overheating/DC offset. This is when the voicecoils get hot enough to melt the thin enamel insulation on the wires in the voicecoil. When that happens, the wire touches itself and shorts out. If this had happened, you would not be hearing anything. As an aside, this is the same thing that can kill a transformer. The smell of a fried transformer is one of those peculiar smells you never forget.

2. Physically damaging the cone. You'll actually see a tear in it and you'll hear distortion, too. If that happens, the distortion is really obvious. If the cone detaches from the voicecoil, you won't get any sound at all, or just a buzzing. It's pretty obvious what that happens.

So it sounds like you caught it in time. Be careful and happy listening.

 

[James Dean]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Further listening indicates that Uncle Erik is correct and there is no damage to the phones, at least that I can tell.