Headphone phase

[nikkicallaghan]

This may sound silly but my sennheiser hd25s seem unbalanced and I was wondering if the connections were out of phase and what would the best way to find out.

If there's an app for this it would make life easy

[Bobbsy]

Well, the standard connection on a TRS for stereo headphones is that left is on the tip, right on the ring and the cable shield on the sleeve. It would be pretty hard for there to be phase issues since these rely on two different (i.e. out of phase) signals arriving at the same ear at the same time which is difficult with individual closed cup headphones though it might be worth checking that you're not wired in mono or something.

 

When you say the sound isn't "balanced" are you talking about level differences? If so the two more likely things would be that your headphones are letting you hear differences that exist in your programme material which are less defined on speakers, or...

 

...could you have an ear infection causing one ear to be less sensitive than the other. I ask this because on more than one occasion lack of level in one side of a headphone has been my first hint of an ear infection.

[andy_s]

is the plug fully seated in the socket? I recall a strange thing on my old CD walkman where if the plug was not quite used in, the dry sound of the vocals was cancelled out as if it was out of phase, and all you could hear was the reverb added to the vocal...

[GaryNattrass]

The cable that goes into the earpiece should have an L and a R on it and the ident should be facing outwards away from your head.

 

I have an old pair of HD25-1 and they seem to be less full range on one side but I suspect one of the drivers is damaged.

[paulears]

I thinks he means that one of the headphone drivers is reversed wiring, not left and right reversed. I had some old a worn Sennheisers that somebody had stood on the cable and pulled out one of the small plugs, then jammed it back in back to front. These headphones always sounded very odd and when I realised what was wrong, the sound was very different, but sadly the reversal had bent the socket and the cable kept falling out until araldite fixed it. The problem was with things panned centre that sounded sort of behind your head. Not like speakers where you get the hole in the middle but these sounds near the centre pan wise were swimming around the back. Which should be impossible?

[bruce]

Try to get hold of a “phase check” track from an audio test CD. The binkster.net one is the one I use - it appears to be difficult to get hold of now, as the original download site has gone, but you can find it on http://web.archive.org/web/20120814085613/http://binkster.net/extras.shtml#cd

 

Download track 2 and listen to it. “This is the left channel.... this is the right channel... this is the centre channel.... this is the surround channel”.

 

The “surround” one is phase inverted, and sounds “wider”. If “Centre” sounds wide and “surround” normal, then your wiring is wrong on one ear.

[Mike Shand]

Could the ground/screen connection be faulty? If this is missing, the two phones respond to the difference between the left and right signals and this appears in anti phase. So you hear effectively the sides signal. It sounds really weird.

 

You get

L input--- L phone--- R phone (anti phase) -- R input

Since the normal grounding point between the two phones is floating.

 

 

[nikkicallaghan]

Thx for the all the replies and inputs guys. Just checked the connecters as suggested by Gary and one was the wrong way round. Just switched it round and all is fine now.

Thx for all the help and replies and making a new member feel welcome

[GaryNattrass]

Back of the net! ?

[Simon Lewis]

Nine posts and no-one mentioned the word, "polarity" :-)