Weird Audio Problem With Front Headphone Jack

MrHumbuck · December 24, 2014

So, a few days ago I started noticing some weird sound qualities with my Sennheiser 429 in some music. On some tracks it made some of the instruments sound staticy and tinny, on some it made it sound like there was a layer of reverb added, but on most, it just sounded like there was less bass and more of a tinny high end.

I thought that there must be something up with the headphones themselves, but a few minutes ago I booted up a 7-ish year old desktop computer, and I plugged the headphones into it, and the problem went. Completely. There was a different static noise that I could hear when there was no music playing, but I'm guessing that that might just be due to it's having an old onboard soundcard.

So, I came back over to my rig, and I checked again, and everything still sounds just as bad when I put it into the front headphone jack. Out of curiosity, I played one of the worst affected tracks though my computer's speakers (which are connected via the rear line-in), and they had no problem. I then plugged my headphones into the speakers, and again, no problem- maybe a very slightly more compressed sound than normal, but the last time I put headphones through those speakers I noticed a slight drop in sound quality, so that's all normal.

I was trying to work out what could have caused this when I remembered that the day I noticed this problem was the same day I tried plugging my new, dirt cheap, clip-on Speedlink Spes mic into my computer, through the front mic jack. It's not plugged in it right now, but I definitely plugged it in for the first time on the same day as I started noticing the audio problems. Could it have damaged something?

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