What's wrong with my HD555s?

[Ogresmash]

Last week I decided to make my first leap in becoming an audiophile and purchased a pair of HD555s and an AV-710 soundcard. They arrived this Monday and I followed the graphical guide to setting up the soundcard for use in Foobar (using the rear Wolfson DAC, setting up kernel streaming, ect.) and for the most part the sound has been great. The bass is good but not overpowering, the mids and highs are very clear and don't sound distorted. However, whenever a song starts to get "dense" an annoying grainy clicking sound kicks in and completely ruins the sound. I'm not talking about a mild barely noticeable artifact, the clicking is loud enough to make the headphones sound like a cheap $10 pair packaged alongside a portable CD player, it's terrible. It shows up most commonly when listening to post-rock, which makes sense because post-rock is all about creating a dense soundscape. When I plugged them into my iPod the clicking was still there, but less pronounced.

I've tried out multiple versions of VIA's Envy24 drivers, so I'm pretty sure that's not a solution to the problem.

The clicking occurs in both 192kbs MP3s and FLACs so it's not a file quality issue.

The only DSP I'm running in Foobar is the resampler (set to 96000 and ultra mode), and I generally run the volume at -4dB. The clicking occurs at all but the quietest volumes though.

It might be caused by my sound card's placement. I stuck it 2 PCI-E slots away from my video card, and 1 PCI slot away from my wireless card. My wireless card is in the bottom-most PCI slot while my sound card is in the uppermost, but still a good distance away from my video card. I don't want to swap the cards around and mess with the IRQs if that's clearly not the problem, but if you guys think there's a good chance that it is the problem I'll give it a shot.

The only other thing I can think of it being is a headphone issue, which would really suck. I'd rather not be forced to send them back for a new pair if I don't have to. They're not burned in yet, but I don't think a clicking sound is a symptom of fresh headphones, is it? Anyway, sorry for the long post and thanks for any help.

 

[HFat]

I'm going to answer although I have no idea what you're experiencing in order to bump your thread.

Possible causes (as far as I can see):
-clipping in the recording (care to post a sample?)
-a hair got near the driver or some other mechanical problem (not likely because, so far as I know, it should show up on bass rather than busy passages)
-clipping amps (not likely as you say you need to turn down the volume a lot for it to disappear)
-something weird about the drivers (???)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ogresmash /img/forum/go_quote.gif When I plugged them into my iPod the clicking was still there, but less pronounced.

Slightly less pronounced (as in it could be down to a difference in coloration)? Or much less pronounced?

 

[MontyPythizzle]

Take off that resampler.

 

[facelvega]

If it wasn't for the fact that it carries over to the ipod, I'd guess it was the resampler as well, and if it hadn't happened on multiple file types and recordings, I'd guess that. Seems like the next step in the process of elimination is to try any other pair of decent quality headphones. It has to be decent quality as stock headphones can conceal clipping and noise problems that their better counterparts reveal. So, find or borrow another pair, and see if you can't narrow the problem to your Senns.

 

[Ogresmash]

Thanks for the advice guys, but after tweaking with Foobar and Audacity a little, it seems that the gain was simply too high for the headphones to handle. I set it to around -6 db and almost all of the distortion disappeared, but is this normal? I've always heard that the gain should typically be left at 0 db, so it doesn't make sense to me that I'd need to set it so low. I'm running the HD555s un-amped which shouldn't be a problem for normal listening, but I listen to a lot of post-rock which is meant to be loud as hell. Do I need to use an amp if I want to listen at higher volumes without getting distortion?

 

[donunus]

gain 0 if all eqs and processing are off should have been fine but if negative is the only way to make the clipping stop so be it then

 

[HFat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ogresmash /img/forum/go_quote.gif I set it to around -6 db and almost all of the distortion disappeared, but is this normal?

To me this suggests a problem with your DSPs, drivers, or soundcard... but then you also hear it with your DAP. I'm clueless. All I can tell you is that it's not normal.

 

[Ogresmash]

Here's a quick clip of the song I'm getting the most distortion in. Completely unmodified other than cutting it out in Audacity and exporting as a FLAC. Just to clarify, when you talk about clipping, are you referring to a popping/crackling static sound? If so, I'm getting a ton of clipping on the piano cascades when my gain is set to 0 (all other volume settings on the PC are maxed), when it's set to -6 the sound is crystal clear. I'm thinking I might've been careless when ripping it and mucked up the settings somehow, because the whole album is suffering from the same problem. Still, some other songs/albums are showing the same problem as well, so I just want to be sure of it before I re-rip everything.

And HFat, the distortion is significantly less pronounced on my iPod. What is unlistenable from my PC will sound decent at higher volumes on my iPod, though the popping is still noticeable.

 

[Ruckus]

Does getting rid of resample make a difference for you? Have it native, forget 4800 or 4100 make a difference?

And noise from the computer itself will often effect sound. Not sure what its called, but for sure, all the electrical stuff in the computer.

Also its not just the soundcard drivers that might be at fault. Check to see of your chipset drivers are up to date. The chipset is what controls everything, including cpu, gpu, PCI-Express ports and sound card.

 

[Duggeh]

Dont use the foobar native resampler. If you want to use one, use the SRC plugin its FAR superior.

 

[Ogresmash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ruckus /img/forum/go_quote.gif Does getting rid of resample make a difference for you? Have it native, forget 4800 or 4100 make a difference?

It didn't do anything to remove the clipping, but I took Duggeh's advice and am using the SRC plugin now and the sound quality itself is much better.

As far as the clipping goes, I seem to have fixed it by applying RG to the songs/albums affected by it. Some of the worst offenders had RG alterations of close to 10db, so I'll be re-ripping those because I clearly botched something the first time around. Thanks again for the help everyone.