Today I received my new Sennheiser HD 598's. When I plugged them into my Asus Xonar DGX sound card, I hear some background noise, some crackling.
It's always there, even when I'm not playing a song or video. When I turn the volume up, the crackling gets worse. Any thoughts or tips?
If not, I'm probably going to have to return them, as this ruins my listening experience.
Sounds like it could be a number of things;
Personally, I had this problem with a Logitech gaming headset, and when I returned it to the store (Best Buy) they opened up the headset to find that the plastic speaker cone was cracked and misplaced. If you plan to return it and get a warrantee replacement, DO NOT OPEN THE HEADSET YOURSELF. That voids the warrantee.
This is probably not as much info as you had hoped for, but it's coming from prior knowledge. Any questions or other problems?
I've tried using it on various other devices, but the problem only seems to occur on my pc. So it isn't nr 1, 2 or 3. Any ideas on how I could test the others?
Do you have a Microphone connected to your Sound Card? If the answer is yes, unplug it and see if the cross channel noise goes away. I've heard a lot of people having cross channel talk between a mic and the speaker output on that particular sound card. solution for it is to use a USB condenser mic instead of a 3.5mm audio jack mic.
No, I haven't, so that couldn't be the issue.
Do you have your motherboard's spread spectrum settings turned off? They are designed to help reduce motherboard EMI discharge from your power components. This can also cause problems with EMI sensitive components like Sound cards. Your specific sound card does not have EMI shielding like the more expensive ones from Asus do. You may want to try enabling all of your spread spectrum settings to see if you have electro-magnetic interference.