headphone hiss

March 12, 2007 2:07 PM

I was listening to a jazz CD on my Linn Classic, through a pair of Sennheiser HD-280s, and am noticing a static hiss when the music goes quiet. Does anyone know if the headphones might be shot, or if there's something to do with the source, or if any way to fix it? I'm guessing the disc wasn't recorded with that much ambient hiss in it, though I could be wrong...
posted by dearleader to Technology (8 answers total)

Hit the pause button on the CD player, see what that does.
posted by aubilenon at 2:26 PM on March 12, 2007

Have you tried a different CD in the player, or even the same CD in another player?

It's certainly possible that the CD in question was poorly recorded.
posted by jjb at 2:27 PM on March 12, 2007

If the hiss stops when the CD isn't actually playing, then the hiss is recorded on the CD. If it's a reasonably old jazz recording, this is actually fairly likely; what you're hearing could well be tape hiss from the original analog master tape.
posted by flabdablet at 2:29 PM on March 12, 2007

hiss from the player with the cd stopped would be the player not the headphones. They don't hiss when they go bad, but rather make cracking noises or other sounds, and they won't do that during silent portions. As suggested, the CD might have noise, especially if it was mastered from an old tape or even vinyl as some older jazz works are.
posted by caddis at 2:33 PM on March 12, 2007

I've never had headphones go bad by hissing. The most common failure I have is a broken connection in the wire or at the plugs. This results in dropouts, not hiss.
posted by chairface at 4:48 PM on March 12, 2007

A defect in the headphones is highly unlikely to cause hissing. Besides, Sennheiser makes decent quality headphones. It's either tape hiss on the original recording, or coming from your amplifier.
posted by neckro23 at 7:06 PM on March 12, 2007

I can hear a low hiss when I plug my Shure E3Cs in some cheap amplifiers, for example computers. Try an iPod?
posted by stereo at 4:40 AM on March 13, 2007

Besides what everybody else has mentioned, there might also be microphonic effects from the headphone cord. But yeah, everybody else pretty much has it covered. Switch out components until you isolate the problem.
posted by box at 5:52 AM on March 13, 2007