I think there's something wrong with my HE4XX and I wanted to pick some peoples brains on it. I bought it recently the last couple of weeks, and I've not been using it loads as I've still had better results with my K702, but revisited the HE4XX EQ today, and I think the HE4XX is giving me tinnitus (which I'm not susceptible to, and I don't listen loud). When I first got them couple of weeks ago the same thing happened, but I assumed it was something in my room making the high pitched tone or a temporary problem with my ear....I stopped using the HE4XX the last week and the tinnitus went away....today I start messing with the HE4XX and it's come back. So I think the HE4XX is causing it. Another thing that makes me think it's the HE4XX is that there is some strange but subtle "distortion" particularly around female vocals and high hats, where there seems to be additional higher pitched ringing surrounding or even preceding those sounds, and it's that ringing that is the same pitch as this tinnitus I'm experiencing. I think there's something wrong with my HE4XX and it's throwing out some dangerous tones, or that's just the way they are.....I'm not sure. I'm also not doing silly boosting of high frequencies in my EQ's, so it's not that, and I even tested not boosting the treble dip at 5500Hz to see if there was something associated with a sharp boost there that was causing distortion & my tinnitus.......I even tried EQ's that only boosted the bass by half my original boost value to see if bass boost was making the HE4XX throw out some weird high pitched distortion. Here's one of my EQ's just so you can see the Frequency Response of the original stock HE4XX as well as a bit more context for my EQ's, it's almost the same model of headphone as the HE400i, hence me posting in this thread, just some different pads and maybe some other subtle changes:
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I gotta say it's really not been a pleasant experience with this headphone because of this discovery of mine. By the way I was listening to my K702 most of the day today playing some computer games and listening to some music, and it was only after donning the HE4XX for a 2 minute listening test that I noticed the tinnitus came back, so I really think this is the HE4XX fault.
EDIT: one more additional thought, this headphone in stock format has a very grainy holographic type sound (first thing that came into my head as soon as I heard it), which is especially noticeable at high volumes. I say high volumes because I flipped between EQ's using EqualiserAPO by turning one off & turning the other on.....so there's a brief period where the headphone is playing in it's stock un'EQd format at an extra 8dB due to no negative preamp.....and this is when I noticed this very grainy holographic type sound of this headphone when stock at loud volumes. An additional point to help diagnose the issue perhaps.
EDIT #2: a lot of the graininess is removed with the Harman EQ's, but still some persists.....if this helps narrow down the problem.