[286963]

Does the sign look like the headphone doesn't produce any sound at all ? or does it just feel like the sound is more damped?
 
Thanks in advance!
Sorry for my bad english

 

[286963]

*bump*

 

[IEMCrazy]

I can answer this one, unfortunately, since the other day a faulty amp issue blew out my HD650's - both drivers, though one worse than the other.
 
It depends in what way the driver was damaged.  If you actually burn/fuse the voice coil, usually it results in no sound at all.   If you tear the driver cone (or membrane in the case of orthos) or, as is I believe the case with mine since I see no physical damage or distortion to the cone, if the voice coil slightly separates from the cone, the headphones may sound "wrong" somehow.  More damped as you say is a possibility.  In my case, the left driver lost nearly 100% of bass and mid-bass, but the treble and mids sound fine until I turn the volume up at which point the whole thing buzzes like a bee is caught in the cup. 
 
The damage to the right driver is more subtle.  It sounds mostly ok, but especially when turning the volume up it becomes more apparent that there is distortion in portions of the spectrum.  Obvious distortion/clipping, and an occasional subtle ping of a vibration.  That one is almost listenable though, the left one is beyond listening.
 
That was caused by excessive driver travel resulting from a loud "pop" or "thump" on amp power on.  A similar type of damage can occur through simply too loud a playback.
 
However if it sounds ONLY more damped, and does not display any distortion, clipping, or buzzing, it's possible you're not experiencing driver damage but some other issue.
 

 

[286963]

I see.. we have the same amp right here.. Lyr has some power that really need to be handled with care.. I am sorry for your Senns HD650..
So, basically the dangerous sign from Lyr is when u heard a loud popping sound when it is turned on, right?

 

[IEMCrazy]

Uh oh...a THIRD case?  This can't be good!  Did you have the same popping when you turn it on? Or was your potential damage caused by loud music volumes?
 
If you have loud popping in the headphones at power-on as well, and think your 650s may have been damaged by that, (or even if you think they weren't) you may want to contact Jason at Schiit.  It won't help your 650's, but the amp probably needs to go in for service if that's the case (note, I'm still using mine in that condition for a while before sending it back, and it's mostly fine, but the popping still seems to be the sign of whatever problem exists.)

 

[286963]

The poppping sound happens only if I turn off and turn on in a short time (The relay doesn't function properly if I do that, said Jason)..  Also mine is AKG K702.. not HD650.. Luckily, I haven't found any trouble about distortion and my AKG K702 still operates as it is used to be.. But I sometimes hear some crackle sound.. (which is I heard since I purchased Lyr, and I think it's because the tube has not been warm yet)

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

The poppping sound happens only if I turn off and turn on in a short time (The relay doesn't function properly if I do that, said Jason)..  Also mine is AKG K702.. not HD650.. Luckily, I haven't found any trouble about distortion and my AKG K702 still operates as it is used to be.. But I sometimes hear some crackle sound.. (which is I heard since I purchased Lyr, and I think it's because the tube has not been warm yet)

Ahh, good, it sounds like your Lyr isn't one of the problem ones.  There are at least two of us on the forums here, and I suspect a third (but can't for the life of me remember who it is) that have the faulty ones.  From the two that are known, we both bought it in the Jan-Feb time period, so I suspect there's just a handful of units sharing from the same bin of whatever part there's a bad batch of.  It's good to hear the problem is confined and not epidemic!
 
Yeah, turning it on and off in a hort time is bad, if for no other reason, it's effectively tube-murder  I doubt the power supply likes it eitther. 
 
K702's an excellent can as well.  I love my K702 and HD650...or, rather, DID like them equally.  I'm down to just the 702 now.  I'm replacing the 650's with HE-400's to give orthos a try.  I may get my 650's repaired though.  It's cost ineffective, but I suspect it's $100-150 for new drivers. Either way, K702 will likely remain my go-to can for classical and live jazz.  It's a great classical can, very exciting presentation.   
 
Cold tubes can be a source of crackling, yes.  I generall let my amp warm up at a minimum 20 min or so,and ideally about an hour.   They definitely don't need an hour to warm up, but I've found, at least with the HD650's they tend to provide a much warmer presentation after an hour or so when they're evenly hot.  Since the 702's are less voltage dependent and are driven very well from SS amps, I don't think they're as picky about a long warmup as the 650s are.  
 
Anyway, I do think the "power" of the Lyr is overstated in terms of the dangers.  Any decent amp can output way more power than a speaker can take,  may loudspeaker amp could pout out double the current the speakers can handle....but why would I want to crank it so loud it will distort?  I'd lose my hearing at those volumes long before I'd blow a speaker!  As long as your ears are in tact the power should be no trouble for any headphone.   The only real trouble is in the event of a defect or failure where it can blast huge amounts of power when it shouldn't.  But then, what amp is incapable of failure ?

 

[286963]

Quote:

Ahh, good, it sounds like your Lyr isn't one of the problem ones.  There are at least two of us on the forums here, and I suspect a third (but can't for the life of me remember who it is) that have the faulty ones.  From the two that are known, we both bought it in the Jan-Feb time period, so I suspect there's just a handful of units sharing from the same bin of whatever part there's a bad batch of.  It's good to hear the problem is confined and not epidemic!
 
Yeah, turning it on and off in a hort time is bad, if for no other reason, it's effectively tube-murder  I doubt the power supply likes it eitther. 
 
K702's an excellent can as well.  I love my K702 and HD650...or, rather, DID like them equally.  I'm down to just the 702 now.  I'm replacing the 650's with HE-400's to give orthos a try.  I may get my 650's repaired though.  It's cost ineffective, but I suspect it's $100-150 for new drivers. Either way, K702 will likely remain my go-to can for classical and live jazz.  It's a great classical can, very exciting presentation.   
 
Cold tubes can be a source of crackling, yes.  I generall let my amp warm up at a minimum 20 min or so,and ideally about an hour.   They definitely don't need an hour to warm up, but I've found, at least with the HD650's they tend to provide a much warmer presentation after an hour or so when they're evenly hot.  Since the 702's are less voltage dependent and are driven very well from SS amps, I don't think they're as picky about a long warmup as the 650s are.  
 
Anyway, I do think the "power" of the Lyr is overstated in terms of the dangers.  Any decent amp can output way more power than a speaker can take,  may loudspeaker amp could pout out double the current the speakers can handle....but why would I want to crank it so loud it will distort?  I'd lose my hearing at those volumes long before I'd blow a speaker!  As long as your ears are in tact the power should be no trouble for any headphone.   The only real trouble is in the event of a defect or failure where it can blast huge amounts of power when it shouldn't.  But then, what amp is incapable of failure ?

Well for power, I think Lyr is designed for orthos.. I have heard that the power necesary to drive LCD2 is quite huge.. Thank you anyway for your explanation!
 

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

Well for power, I think Lyr is designed for orthos.. I have heard that the power necesary to drive LCD2 is quite huge.. Thank you anyway for your explanation!
 

No problem.
 
The power is definitely designed for orthos, though it's overkill even for orthos.  Schiit's own page says that LCD2, HE-400 & HE-500 can be driven by Asgard.  Not sure about LCD-3, and you'd need something like a Lyr to drive HE-5, HE-6, HE-4.  But even then they're rated at a whopping 2W.  While that's a LOT of power into a headphone it's a far cry for the 6W the Lyr can put out.  The idea behind additional power is to have more headroom so non-linear sensitivities or impedance loads don't get an altered freq. response when drawing more power, and for when using quiet source signals that require more amplification than an average line level would need.
 
General rule in amplifiers (coming from the loudspeaker world) is it's never a bad thing to have an amplifier with a lot of spare power so long as the volume control is granular enough to support useful volume adjustments.  Having an amp with too little power could force you to raise the amplifier into distorting territory (> -0.0db) The idea is that the natural gain is well over what you'd ever listen to it, and attenuate down to appropriate listening at all times.)   Now factor in the possibility of inefficient speakers and a very quiet line source, and you may need to apply a lot more gain than you'd expect from a 2-3V RMS line signal to achieve proper listening levels. 
 
So, yes, it's extremely powerful, but since the volume dial has a broad range of motion and fine control, its never a problem assuming it's not being used with hyper-sensitive headphones such as Sony MDR-7506 or IEMs.  Your ears would know if it's too loud, and short of a faulty unit, it should pose no problems (though I imagine should they ever truly fail, they can do so quite spectacularly...)
 
 
 

 

[286963]

Quote:

No problem.
 
The power is definitely designed for orthos, though it's overkill even for orthos.  Schiit's own page says that LCD2, HE-400 & HE-500 can be driven by Asgard.  Not sure about LCD-3, and you'd need something like a Lyr to drive HE-5, HE-6, HE-4.  But even then they're rated at a whopping 2W.  While that's a LOT of power into a headphone it's a far cry for the 6W the Lyr can put out.  The idea behind additional power is to have more headroom so non-linear sensitivities or impedance loads don't get an altered freq. response when drawing more power, and for when using quiet source signals that require more amplification than an average line level would need.
 
General rule in amplifiers (coming from the loudspeaker world) is it's never a bad thing to have an amplifier with a lot of spare power so long as the volume control is granular enough to support useful volume adjustments.  Having an amp with too little power could force you to raise the amplifier into distorting territory (> -0.0db) The idea is that the natural gain is well over what you'd ever listen to it, and attenuate down to appropriate listening at all times.)   Now factor in the possibility of inefficient speakers and a very quiet line source, and you may need to apply a lot more gain than you'd expect from a 2-3V RMS line signal to achieve proper listening levels. 
 
So, yes, it's extremely powerful, but since the volume dial has a broad range of motion and fine control, its never a problem assuming it's not being used with hyper-sensitive headphones such as Sony MDR-7506 or IEMs.  Your ears would know if it's too loud, and short of a faulty unit, it should pose no problems (though I imagine should they ever truly fail, they can do so quite spectacularly...)
 
 
 

 
I am a little curious about ur case.. does the distortion, crackle, and buzzing apply on every music file? because to be honest, until now I can't differ quite well between recording's fault/headphone fault.. how you can differ them?
 

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

 
I am a little curious about ur case.. does the distortion, crackle, and buzzing apply on every music file? because to be honest, until now I can't differ quite well between recording's fault/headphone fault.. how you can differ them?
 

Certain frequencies are more prone to trigger the effects, and different tracks will hit those frequencies more often, but yes, it's constant and very present.  As soon as I put the headphones on, at a low-ish volume, something just sounded wrong and unbalanced about them.   Granted, I've had the headphones 5 years or so, so I'm extremely familiar with their sound, but it sounded off.   It didn't take long experimenting with different tracks, and putting one just one earcup on at a time to realize bass was simply GONE on the one side.  Non-existent.   When I turned the volume up they would have a constant loud-ish buzzing, like a bee, in the one side as though the driver is hitting something (which in all probability it the cone is actually hitting its own now-detached voice coil.) 
 
The other driver isn't as severely damaged so it was harder to tell.  Putting just the earcup on, and turning the volume up a little over where I normally would listen, and turning on a track I know very well across a variety of speakers, it sounded off.  The female vocals (Ane Brun on Koop Island Blues from Koop's "Koop Islands" CD)  sounded slightly uneven and warbly, not smooth and sultry as usual.  A slight "buzz" was present on some of the bass plucks or brass transients at higher volumes. 
 
If you don't have a loud "pop" from your headphones when you plug them in or when the relay clicks when you power on your Lyr, you definitely don't have the same cause for your issue as I did.  The pop was loud enough to hear while standing somewhat away from the headphones as they sat on the stand. 
 
However similar effects can occur from simply playing the music too loud, etc.  It's effectively forcing the driver into too far an excursion by giving it too much power.  It can either tear the cone, or separate the voice coil, which is what produces that effect, whether from amp malfunction or from playing music WAY too loud.
 
There are other possibilities though.  Something, such as hair, could be in contact with the driver to produce buzzing.  That's common enough.  Sometimes a stray hair makes it into the foam and touches the driver, so if you have real buzzing, that could be it.
 
Cold tubes can produce some crackle.  Give it a while to warm up and see if the problem goes away when its warm. 
 
Does it happen on both sides or just one?  It could be a faulty tube if its one side.  It's not uncommon for a tube to be bad out of the box. Such is living with tubes.
 
And of course there's source & audio files. What DAC or source player are you using?  PC sound card, CD player, portable player, dedicated DAC?  If it's a PC you could be just picking up noise from the PC itself.  HDD access, can often play noise into audio.  When I was using an iPod Touch, I would sometimes get a stactic or "crackle" from wifi access when the headphone cable touched the audio cable. 
 
My best suggestion for ruling out random issues if you use a PC as source is: Get a plain old CD or DVD player if you have one around, plug your Lyr into that, and play a CD.  If your crackling and popping doesn't exist there, you have a PC or cabling issue going on. 
 
Or test with music you know is ripped well (rather than ripping your own, to rule out ripping issues, you can buy a lossy MP3/AAC for test purposes.) Something that you know has clean sound, meaning no rock, metal, hip hop, or studio pop.  Try something clean that will test all frequencies.  Something jazz with solid bass, something classical and bombastic instrumentation with a lot of brass and sweeping strings.   Basically you want to find something that is well mastered, well ripped, and gives you clean, isolated notes to listen to in each of the ranges of bass, mid-bass, mid, and treble.  Nothings perfect, but if everything sounds clean in most registers, at louder-than-normal volume, I'm guessing you're in good shape.

 

[286963]

Quote:

Certain frequencies are more prone to trigger the effects, and different tracks will hit those frequencies more often, but yes, it's constant and very present.  As soon as I put the headphones on, at a low-ish volume, something just sounded wrong and unbalanced about them.   Granted, I've had the headphones 5 years or so, so I'm extremely familiar with their sound, but it sounded off.   It didn't take long experimenting with different tracks, and putting one just one earcup on at a time to realize bass was simply GONE on the one side.  Non-existent.   When I turned the volume up they would have a constant loud-ish buzzing, like a bee, in the one side as though the driver is hitting something (which in all probability it the cone is actually hitting its own now-detached voice coil.) 
 
The other driver isn't as severely damaged so it was harder to tell.  Putting just the earcup on, and turning the volume up a little over where I normally would listen, and turning on a track I know very well across a variety of speakers, it sounded off.  The female vocals (Ane Brun on Koop Island Blues from Koop's "Koop Islands" CD)  sounded slightly uneven and warbly, not smooth and sultry as usual.  A slight "buzz" was present on some of the bass plucks or brass transients at higher volumes. 
 
If you don't have a loud "pop" from your headphones when you plug them in or when the relay clicks when you power on your Lyr, you definitely don't have the same cause for your issue as I did.  The pop was loud enough to hear while standing somewhat away from the headphones as they sat on the stand. 
 
However similar effects can occur from simply playing the music too loud, etc.  It's effectively forcing the driver into too far an excursion by giving it too much power.  It can either tear the cone, or separate the voice coil, which is what produces that effect, whether from amp malfunction or from playing music WAY too loud.
 
There are other possibilities though.  Something, such as hair, could be in contact with the driver to produce buzzing.  That's common enough.  Sometimes a stray hair makes it into the foam and touches the driver, so if you have real buzzing, that could be it.
 
Cold tubes can produce some crackle.  Give it a while to warm up and see if the problem goes away when its warm. 
 
Does it happen on both sides or just one?  It could be a faulty tube if its one side.  It's not uncommon for a tube to be bad out of the box. Such is living with tubes.
 
And of course there's source & audio files. What DAC or source player are you using?  PC sound card, CD player, portable player, dedicated DAC?  If it's a PC you could be just picking up noise from the PC itself.  HDD access, can often play noise into audio.  When I was using an iPod Touch, I would sometimes get a stactic or "crackle" from wifi access when the headphone cable touched the audio cable. 
 
My best suggestion for ruling out random issues if you use a PC as source is: Get a plain old CD or DVD player if you have one around, plug your Lyr into that, and play a CD.  If your crackling and popping doesn't exist there, you have a PC or cabling issue going on. 
 
Or test with music you know is ripped well (rather than ripping your own, to rule out ripping issues, you can buy a lossy MP3/AAC for test purposes.) Something that you know has clean sound, meaning no rock, metal, hip hop, or studio pop.  Try something clean that will test all frequencies.  Something jazz with solid bass, something classical and bombastic instrumentation with a lot of brass and sweeping strings.   Basically you want to find something that is well mastered, well ripped, and gives you clean, isolated notes to listen to in each of the ranges of bass, mid-bass, mid, and treble.  Nothings perfect, but if everything sounds clean in most registers, at louder-than-normal volume, I'm guessing you're in good shape.

 
one last question, as an AKG K-702 users, I can only see that the drivers don't involve any capacitors, resistors, etc. Is this true?
 
 

 

[zazex]

Quote:

Does the sign look like the headphone doesn't produce any sound at all ? or does it just feel like the sound is more damped?
 
Thanks in advance!
Sorry for my bad english

 

Buzzing sound,
very thin sound like an AM radio,
or no sound at all.
 
 
 

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

 
one last question, as an AKG K-702 users, I can only see that the drivers don't involve any capacitors, resistors, etc. Is this true?
 
 

You are correct. Headphones and speakers in general are pretty simple devices.  They're a simple electro-magnetic resistive load. No electronics at all, just the magnet motors and the physical mass (cone, or membrane in the case of orthos) they propel. 
 
Noise cancelling,headphines with onboard volue control or eqs (i.e. any headphone with a built in amp including Beats), and wireless headphones have electronics, asdo multi-driver balanced armature IEMs like Triple Fi and SE535 due to the required crossover.  Regular headphones like K702 do not.

 

[dominobrowny44]

So, I think i may have a broken driver. At first I thought it was a short in the cable, since I could only hear sound in the left side. After troubleshooting (wiggling wire in different spots, unplugging/replugging, trying different devices, etc) i realized that i could still hear sound through that side, but it was very faint. It sounds like it's only treble- no bass or mid range, whatsoever. Its amplitude is extremely low compared to the left satellite. Could this be a driver issue? The signal is definitely coming through, but it's very weak, as if there is no amplification. I haven't had this particular issue before.

By the way, I own a pair of Shure SRH240's.