How can you tell if your headphones are damaged?

[MeAgain]

Hey, I was editing the other day with Sony MDR-7506s, trying to get rid of some symballance. It was very sharp and loud, so to find the right frequency in the EQ, I lowered the gain considerably on the whole thing and then raised the frequency band gain to about +7 db, which was already pretty loud.

One of the times I forgot the lower the gain on the entire clip, meaning I REALLY boosted that frequency without realizing...and it was on a loop...and suddenly I have this sharp sound, like a knife to my brain, repeating 30 times a second.

Well I obviously immediately stopped everything in a cold sweat.

My hearing is fine, but now I'm paranoid that I may have damaged the headphones? Have had plenty of feedback run through while recording a few months ago, and there's no noticeable crackling or dropouts while using it now, but I'm worried maybe it effected the quality of the higher frequencies? Do headphones work in similar way to human eardrums, or should I not worry so much unless I hear actual signs of damage? How loud and piercing of a sound can these things handle? Just worried about sonic accuracy now...

 

[DrDave]

Chances are close to zero that the headphones are damaged. As the membrane and other parts of the headphones age, there is a slight change in the sound, owing to environmental things such as dust and humidity, as well as the actual wear and tear of using them. Hey, they may even sound better (not that you should do it again). There is always a chance that you can wreck them, but usually you would hear some major distortion. A fragment of hair, for example, can make a buzzing sound, and that's minor. Most Sony's tend to slightly emphasize sibilance, which is handy if you need to spot a noise issue in live production, so you might want to do your final mix on speakers. Headphones skew the image slightly as well, so balanced speakers are recommended.

 

[gpforet]

Sonic accuracy is term I hate to use with headphones and the 7506s are no exception. Don't get me wrong, they are a great set of cans and very popular, but not becuase they are sonically accurate so I think your question is: have I altered the frequency response of my headphones? And the answer is, possibly. Only you can decide if they sound the same as before.

When I'm getting into the thick of things with eq, siblance, sonic space, I rely on my nearfield monitors in a treated space. I understand you may be working that critically, but did want to point out that these cans are not flat in response.

One alternative to cans, and the road I've taken for field work, is to wear in-ear monitors. Most dual armature models provide a far more accurate monitoring enviroment and with ear molds, offer better isolation from outside sounds. The ones I use are the M-Audio IE-30s (which are mechanical the same as the Ultimate Ear 5s but are more rugged) and had molds made. I can wear them all day without my ears sweating, and the isolation is about 26db.

 

[Noiz2]

I'll just toss out there that other than dialog (and ADR) editing (not mixing) you should never work with headphones. Your perception is tossed way off base and you will spent a lot of time on things people will not hear. Also the sense of space is way off, you will add reverb way over what will sound right through speakers.

There is a discontinued LAKE box HSM6240 that creates a virtual space with headphones. Very cool and you can actually premix 5.1 with headphones on. But you still need to final in a space with speakers.

And headphones work very differently than your ears and there is little chance that you changed the headphones to any noticeable amount.

 

[Rick Burnett]

I'll also add that mixing in headphones is really not a great thing to do either, even if you didn't ask The biggest problem being frequency response and how your ears are playing such a huge roll in how the sound is entering your ears. Even further, without nearfield monitors, you aren't getting that cross contamination between your ears that is so necessary for things like reverb, as mentioned.

I mean, not that we all don't have situations where we have to use headphones somewhere/sometime. I too also have in ear monitors and a very expensive set of offset driver headphones from Ultrasone that have the most amazingly flat response I have heard, yet, they are still not the same.

Funny enough, in a pinch I've actually used the plugin 'panorama' by waveArts as it creates that cross feedback using special convolution methods. While it is still not the same, it is the closest thing I've found when I need to do something in headphones.

Pertaining to your headphones, you will KNOW when they are damaged. Given the way they typically work, which is through a magnet and a coil of wire, if one frequency was bad, most would be bad. Further, if you caused a problem with where the diaphragm connects to the speaker cage, mostly bass frequencies would let you know you've blown the coil or something. So chances are, you are good.