[shashankm]

Hi,
Lately have a peculiar problem with my Sennheiser HD 380 Pro. These are well built and excellent quality for money with the sound quality always ready to delight. However, recently I checked they crackle and distort beyond a volume level. Especially the bass frequencies distort and have to knob down the volume.

Sound source is Realtek ALC1150 DAC and Amplifier installed in Gigabyte Gaming 5 motherboard which is insanely loud and extremely vibrant sound chip. I have opened up all its four gain switches and most of the times, a windows volume level of 12 sounds too loud. However, listening to bass heavy songs such as On my level - Wiz Khalifa, this thing makes the headphones distort way too much beyond volume levels of 65-70.

I don't use any equalizer - What am I missing? I really wished to experience its peak loudness with these pairs of headphones but heck. Do I need higher impedance headphones which I doubt is the case?

Thank you

 

[shteph]

Hard to say. I will tell you a story of an incident that happened with my Focal Spirit Pros and maybe it will help you.
The Spirit comes with two cables, a curly one and a straight one. I was using the curly one for most everything until one day I started getting an annoying distortion in the low frequencies. I asked my dealer about it because I thought it was an issue with the headphones and he recommended switching to the straight cable. Once I switched to the straight cable, it was back to working like new. I'm not sure what was happening exactly, but if you can find a straight cable to test, I'd recommend it over jumping to buying new headphones.

 

[cossix]

Along with the previous suggestion, try testing it as much you can. Whack the gain all the way down and see if it gets loud enough. I would imagine you can have low gain and just use software volume controls, don't forget to use both Windows volume and Application volume. Then I'd try changing the cable if possible.