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Originally Posted by JasonK /img/forum/go_quote.gif
We want your ideas! Head-fi is the reason we now include the ++ treble. If anyone has new ideas or comments for improvement post it, PM me, email or call the office and ask for me. Innovation takes inspiration and we love to have feedback.
Jason
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Okay. I had something of a breakthrough with my TrekStor Vibez today. With a new Vibez and a new set of SA6s, I still heard the same distortion in the bass frequencies that I noticed with my earlier pairing. About to chalk it up to some strange sort of bad blood between the two devices and then resign myself to using my SA6s exclusively with my Sansa e280, I tried one last thing: placing a headphone extension cable in the path between the SA6's plug and the Vibez' headphone jack. Lo and behold, the distortion was gone! Apparently, the SA6's plug makes inadequate contact with the Vibez' jack despite working in pretty much any other scenario.
Since the SA6 are the only headphones of mine that reveal this problem (I thought it happened with my Atrios earlier, but have since realized the Atrios are just picking up the player's electrical/drive noises at very low volumes), I thought it prudent to make some comparisons: Holding the SA6 plug beside the extension cable plug and the plugs of my other headphones, I noticed that the SA6's lacks an additional bit of widened metal post at the base that the rest of them have. It seems this difference, while certainly minimal, is enough to make them problematic with the Vibez' narrow and very slightly recessed jack.
Some badly-angled pics which poorly illustrate the difference
:
SA6 plug:
Atrio plug:
If you could flip that SA6 around, you'd see that the small metal base which is visible on the Atrio's plug seems to be embedded in the SA6 plug's plastic housing.
Since the SA6 features fabulously replaceable cables,
I propose this: that Sleek roll out another cable with a redesigned plug whose post extends a little farther from its housing. They could incorporate this into a straight plug if it needs to be differentiated from the original design, and this would fill the people-who-prefer-straight-plugs niche at the same time (although I confess I personally prefer right-angled ones). This might also be a good opportunity to make an iPhone-jack compatible cable (if that was ever a concern).
I realize that's not a particularly minor suggestion, and whether or not a new connector ever sees its way out of the Sleek Audio laboratories, I want to emphasize how extraordinarily pleased I am with my SA6s. For the most part, I just wanted to share my trials and travails with the SA6/Vibez combination to (1) express my relief at having finally found the source of my woes, and (2) illuminate any future SA6/Vibez users who may encounter this problem (cn11, it seems, is a lucky one). Some user-side solutions that occur to me right now:
- Connect a short headphone extension cable to the SA6, such as those marketed as "iPhone adapters" (e.g. the Griffin and Belkin ones -- I've just placed an order for both ).
- Reterminate your existing SA6 cable with a compatible plug, or purchase a spare SA6 cable to reterminate. Given how thin the SA6 cable is, however, I suspect it uses painted wires, which can be an absolute bear to solder if the painted-on isolation isn't designed to burn away in hot solder. (Can you comment on how the wires are isolated in the stock cable, Jason?)
That's all for now. Thanks to those of you who made it this far!