Sennheiser PC 350 crackling?

Droc

Droc

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 20, 2007
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I picked up the sennheiser PC 350 today and right away noticed crackling.
Im just using my onboard sound card.
Its a very light crackling. My wife tried them and didnt notice, but I defiantly do.

I have an X-raider 7.1 I can pull from a shelfed PC, is it worth the hassel of trying it over the onboard?

I tried my Grado SR225 and dont have any crackling...Its like very light distortion at high notes.
 
same thing happened to me on my ath-m50 on the left ear. only happened at certain frequencies. turned out to be a bad driver. fortunately i was able to order a new driver direct from audio technica. hopefully thats not the case with your headset but it would be worth a shot to try it with the sound card.
 
either a bad driver or you have a hair or something in there. Just email Sennheiser and they should hook you up.
 
Gave it a run for a few hours last night, seems to be going away.
 
should add, IMHO the build quality on these $200 headphones feels cheap. The pads are cheap, the band seems solid, but it has very little flex. No braided cable.
I have a few pairs of decent headphones, but never any sennheisers, but despite being 2x the price, my Corsair HS1 construction felt much better(aside from the cable flex joints). The sound is ok, but nothing amazing, and the mic is decent at best.
 
Droc said:
should add, IMHO the build quality on these $200 headphones feels cheap. The pads are cheap, the band seems solid, but it has very little flex. No braided cable.
I have a few pairs of decent headphones, but never any sennheisers, but despite being 2x the price, my Corsair HS1 construction felt much better(aside from the cable flex joints). The sound is ok, but nothing amazing, and the mic is decent at best.
Click to expand...

I also have the pc350 for about a year now and used HS1 in the past before it died. You got to keep in mind that hs1 came out in 2010 and pc350 came out in 2008. Of course Cosair will look into what's in the market and make a product that will be better than the rest. In my opinion, I think the PC350 sound better when paired with a good sound card. While the construction might not be solid as the HS1 but I love the pad because I have a fairly big head and I like the style because I own an HD558
 
This is why you don't buy headsets. I know they are convenient but a desktop mic works just fine. You get more for the same money buying stereo headphones. For example, $200 gets you in the range of AKG 601s and 701s, Sennheiser 598s and 558s. All of those are premium gaming headphones and use much clearer drivers and housings than the pc 350.
 
spaceman said:
This is why you don't buy headsets. I know they are convenient but a desktop mic works just fine. You get more for the same money buying stereo headphones. For example, $200 gets you in the range of AKG 601s and 701s, Sennheiser 598s and 558s. All of those are premium gaming headphones and use much clearer drivers and housings than the pc 350.
Click to expand...

I disagree to some extent. We all know that real headphones are almost always superior to headsets.
But in my looking around I was never able to find a decent mic. I have a mechanical keyboard, and the majority of the mic I have ever used, especially desktop mics, pickup the keyboard over comms. Mic like the zalman or modmic are omidirectional and pickup the sound of a mechanical keyboard and dont work well with open headphones.

I know for most a desktop mic might be fire if they use PTT with teamspeak or something. I use comms for wasteland, similar to DayZ, where sounds are extremely important. We use always open skype for high quality comms and mic bleed is an absolute killer.
I could not find a solution to mic bleed from either open headphones or a mechanical keyboard.

That and the AKG 701 runs for $350 before tax here...easily over $400 with tax and shipping....and even then Im still puckered for mic bleed.

The PC 350 was the last thing I wanted to get, but I needed a noise canceling mic on decent headphones and everyone, everywhere said these were what to get. Not saying they are wrong, but these should be priced $75-$100 less then where they are.
 
Play close attention to the crackle next time. If the crackle is balanced (not biased towards one side), it'll rule out a few possibilities (faulty driver, hair in the housing, etc.). You can always try a different source to rule out the headphones (a portable music player should work well). It might be possible that the Grado is easier to drive, and the PC350 is requiring more power for the same volume. Some amplifiers running on a weak battery will produce a light almost staticky sound occasionally; perhaps you are hearing something similar to that.
 
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