2. headphones
  3. 184621-75799

Certain frequencies hurt

Recently, due to certain frequencies coming across excessively loud and hurting my ears I've decided to run headphones (Sennheiser HD 800 or Hifiman HE 6se) instead of speakers through my power amps speaker taps. Then I ran across this yesterday:

"I’ll point out you need to be careful with Tube based speaker amps, they are designed to drive a specific impedance, and you’d want to match that with either a resistor in parallel with the headphones or a transformer to impedance match.
It’s also the case that more powerful tube speaker amps will self destruct/blow a fuse if a load is not connected to the terminals, because without the reflected impedance the circuit will draw too much current."

So will running headphones through my Audio Research Ref 75 possibly cause harm to the amp or preamp (both tubes)? The sound is sublime and it causes me no pain. Is this (speaker) set-up overkill for these headphones?

 

mewsickbuff
mewsickbuff OP
233 posts
 

Here’s my system.

Computer with Signalyst HQ Player

Denafrips Terminator Plus DAC (No HP access) Got this a few months ago. Before this had T+A DAC8 DSD. (No harshness)

Audio Research SP 20 Preamp (has HP access sounds good but with a bit of sibilance)

Audio Research Ref 76 Power Amp

(Headphones run through speaker taps with a WyWires connector which sounds sublime). Can’t load a picture but the connector is basically a 4 prong XLR on one end with 4 female speaker tap inserts on the other end-2 left, 2 right).

The volume set for the Senn HP’s is around 3 and for the Hifiman HP’s is around 13.

The ARC power amp is newly acquired. I thought there would be better synergy after I started hearing the harshness with my solid state power amp (Primare A32). But the SS had been sounding very fine. The other new acquirements have been power cords (2 Silnote and 2 Wywires) which I got a few months ago. Before that I was using some 10 gauge generic power cords bought from Amazon without problem.

erik_squires
15,646 posts
 

I think it's odd the title is about frequencies that hurt your ears and then we are talking about Sennheisers.

Maybe we should talk about what causes your ears to hurt and how to correct that?

mewsickbuff OP
233 posts
 

I'm open to suggestions. The ears hurt when listening to certain frequencies thru my speakers so my solution was headphones, since they don't hurt. Like I said I've changed out power cords, DAC and power amp all in the last few months. Wouldn't think the upgrades would be the culprit but who knows. The pain doesn't just occur with my stereo speakers, it's also with TV and car speakers (hence the HP solution). Not necessarily high frequencies but possibly high mids. Some piano notes are particularly disturbing. Can't even limit it to female voices, some higher male voices also cause pain.

macg19
660 posts
 

Have you been to an ENT and an Audiologist? (serious question)

mark200mph
65 posts
 

This is called recruitment  where the vestibular cochlear nerve tries to fire more nerve fibers and overshoot you probably have some hearing loss in those frequencies. Go to a ear nose and throat doctor and get an audiogram have them look at your ear drums to make sure they r ok

More to discover