Sennheiser HD 598 bass "buzzing" problem

[VVCephei]

Hello, I've got a problem with my Sennheiser HD 598.
 
About one week ago my headphones started to make a weird buzzing sound, though I'm not really sure how to name it accurately, maybe it's more like a small "sparkle". That small disortion doesn't appear every time i listen to the same music file, sometimes it's totally okay, and the next day its making these sounds. It seems that it only appears when I have the bass boost mode on the Soundblaster Cinema software enabled. I'm not sure if I stressed the driver, I like to turn the bass boost option all the way up and listen to a pretty bassy music with the volume pretty high.
 
I have the headphones plugged into onboard ALC1150 and I've been using them for nearly 2 years. Anyone has got an idea on what might be the cause of that disortion and is there any way to fix it? The overall sound quality seems to be the same, so it's not that annoying, though I'm worried that it might get worse over time.

 

[Dulalala]

Sounds like the bass boost is causing clipping. In that case just don't use the bass boost or listen at a lower volume.

 

[VVCephei]

So is it possible that the clipping appeared one week ago even though everything was alright before?

 

[Dulalala]

Well some headphones just don't respond well to EQ. It also could be because the EQ is not properly implemented (a positive EQ in the lower frequencies rather than a negative EQ in everything else) and that causes distortion. But you said that you like to listen to things at high volume and with the bass boost up so to me it sounds like clipping is definitely possible. If everything you've been doing has been the same the entire time and the issue persists after turning bass boost off there's a good chance that the driver can't handle the load and is starting to clip which could damage it. 

 

[VVCephei]

Alright, so I'm not using the bass boost mode anymore, but it appears that it's not the main reason of the buzzing. Today I've noticed it again, when I had the bass boost disabled. Also it wasn't even a bassy music. I've played the flac file through foobar2000 and then used youtube to check if it's the same, and yeah, it was. Also that weird sound appears no matter what the volume level is. Got any suggestions if it's something to do with the headphones? Or maybe amp is defective? I'm kinda worried that they will blow up some day.

 

[Dulalala]

It could be in the song itself. Sometimes with bad mastering there can be sections in the song where it has an odd impurity. Is this happening with one specific song or multiple? If possible try to listen to the same song with different headphones. Also try plugging the headphone into different sources to see if the amp is a possible reason for the cause.

 

[VVCephei]

Yeah actually I've plugged them into my phone, and then tried 3 other pairs of headphones and every of them had that little buzz. Jesus, I swear I've listened to that song hundreads of times before and I've never noticed that lol. Though it sounded very similiar to what I can hear when I have the bass boost on on some bassy tracks.