Headphone imbalance...

seanyc5

seanyc5

seanyc5

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Joined
30 Nov 2011
Posts
1,131
Hi all,

I have just sold a pair of Headphones on the bay. Perfect working order.

The guy has messages me saying he wants refund becuase..

"The headphones just arrived. Unfortunately I'll have to return these to you. They are faulty and there is a massive channel imbalance between left and right channel which was not mentioned on the item description.

Please confirm that you will refund the money and I'll get these returned to you today. "

"The left driver is super quiet and right driver is a lot louder. Therefore throwing the centre imaging wayyyy off. It's massively obvious."

Ive asked him how he came to this conclusion and pointed to a head-fi thread that says its normally the source or the listners ears. He came back with this.

"Unfortunately it is not my ears. I have 9 other pairs of headphones include a lower tier in this series. None have anything close to what these have. This is a faulty driver causing an imbalance. To get the centre imaging the right driver has to be reduced 10db to bring it to around the same level but it's still not that close.

I've actually had several hearing tests in the past year which would also prove that is it not my hearing.

If you are not willing to accept return and refund of this item then I wil just have to escalate the issue with ebay. "

Im really annoyed to be honest as I know they are perfect. He has a pair that is a couple of models down.. What I think has happend is he was expecting my pair (top of the line) to blow him away from the model he has, obviously he was not! Paying a decent amount for them I think he thinks they are not worth it.

I asked him how he determined the imbalance

"The 10 db is a estimate I manged to work out from Windows quickly. In windows sound you can change the sound balance and dropping the right channel down 10db seemed to roughly normalise the centre image but it still isn't perfect, it's still somewhat right biased. "

I have now asked for screenshots so I can recrete with the other cans I have and these when I get them back.

I assume there is no point in trying to argue with him and ebay will side with him anyway.

Any thoughts aside from give him a refund/test what he has done?

I sent the cans special delivery before 1pm, he message me at 11.43am does not even sound like he has even gave them a chance.

Thanks,
Sean
 
Most likely buyers remorse and possibly not much you can do. Ebay in these sorts of instances will normally side with the buyer given he has raised it as a fault and your word against his (with buyer usually getting preference). Would just offer a refund once you have received them as much as it sucks.

With that said, I have had imbalanced headphones before with a pair of relatively high end cans, so while I do not expect that to be the case here, I know it does happen.
 
Hard to say in this case as some people will be far more sensitive to channel imbalance than others and unfortunately it isn't a completely rare instance especially on cheaper ones though brands like Sennheiser match most of their more expensive stuff at the factory.

Half of me thinks he will try to palm off his broken old pair of the same model on you or something :|

EDIT: Also stuff like the amp used to drive them can have an impact - some higher end pairs for instance come with a long lead that can destabilise certain amps leading to things like noticeable channel imbalance that won't happen with other headphones or is less noticeable with other headphones.
 
Rroff said:
Hard to say in this case as some people will be far more sensitive to channel imbalance than others and unfortunately it isn't a completely rare instance especially on cheaper ones though brands like Sennheiser match most of their more expensive stuff at the factory.

Half of me thinks he will try to palm off his broken old pair of the same model on you or something :|

EDIT: Also stuff like the amp used to drive them can have an impact - some higher end pairs for instance come with a long lead that can destabilise certain amps leading to things like noticeable channel imbalance that won't happen with other headphones or is less noticeable with other headphones.
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I have just accepted the refund and will test/get family/friends to test.

Nah I will know they are mine as there is a slight nick on the one side (with pictures on ebay).

I asked him to try multiple sources etc.

They had an RRP of £1000 in the UK, I got them for around £380 about 3-4 years ago - they sold for £320! Thought I done very well, was too good to be true I suppose.

Would you relist after some testing or just keep them? They are very nice cans I just only use the Clear now.

Thanks,
Sean
 
Radox-0 said:
Most likely buyers remorse and possibly not much you can do. Ebay in these sorts of instances will normally side with the buyer given he has raised it as a fault and your word against his (with buyer usually getting preference). Would just offer a refund once you have received them as much as it sucks.

With that said, I have had imbalanced headphones before with a pair of relatively high end cans, so while I do not expect that to be the case here, I know it does happen.
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Did you get another pair to replace them? I mean I suppose it really could be me lol ? I have hunderds of hours on those cans haha always thought they where great.
 
seanyc5 said:
Did you get another pair to replace them? I mean I suppose it really could be me lol ? I have hunderds of hours on those cans haha always thought they where great.
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Yeah in my case I did get a replacement and they worked fine and were. Thought I was losing the plot so did blind tests with few people and did not point out any issues and let them come up with the conclusion and it was always there was a slight imbalance that improved when I tweaked the db individually. Similarly have a bunch of headphones and they did not have the issue from the AMPs i tested in so had a baseline to work from.

With that said, as you put in a fair few hours from your post and did not have an issue, I suspect its partly buyers remorse at play which sucks.
 
My hearing is slightly better in one ear over the other so I put a slight bias on the balance, but it's so slight I often don't really need to for casual listening.
 
Ive just got the cans back, plugged them in. WOW the left side is about 50% the volume of the right! I can't see how this would happen in transit, surely if they where damaged in transit then it would crackle or something if the connection was loose.

Really annoyed now as it has cost me £22 in postage special delivery both ways, and the headphones are essentially no good now. Aside from emailing audio technica to see if I can buy a driver is there anything else I can do? It does not appear they have been opened as suggested above but who knows. All I know is they where 100% not like this before!

Thanks,
Sean
 
I take you have checked and that they are the same ones?

If they haven't been opened and had the drivers swapped, then the only other possibility is that it's something that happened during transit.

Can't you claim that they were damaged in transit with royal mail?

Special delivery covers for so much cost of loss or damage. I think the minimum cover for special delivery is £500.
 
Marsman said:
I take you have checked and that they are the same ones?

If they haven't been opened and had the drivers swapped, then the only other possibility is that it's something that happened during transit.

Can't you claim that they were damaged in transit with royal mail?

Special delivery covers for so much cost of loss or damage. I think the minimum cover for special delivery is £500.
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Yeah defo the same ones. It does not look like they have been opened as the screws have oxidation on them as they did before and the heads look good still but who knows if was very careful I suppose he could have.

I had a breif look on the Royal Mail site, they obviously don't make it easy! I read on google you can get the drivers for £50 each. May as well just buy and driver and replace it myself then see how they sound and if I still feel like selling them.

Thanks all,
Sean
 
Definitely curious that some shipping damage would cause sound level difference.
Loose wiring/broken soldering certainly shouldn't cause that, at least without some crackling/occasional complete cutting out.
And that's pretty much only shipping damage which wouldn't show clear external damage.
 
Or he stuck em in an amp capable of significant output power not realising it was on max and did some damage maybe :s unfortunately no way to know.
 
Rroff said:
Or he stuck em in an amp capable of significant output power not realising it was on max and did some damage maybe :s unfortunately no way to know.
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Some partially shorted voice coil could show with multimeter.
 
If I get chance over the weekend ill take them apart and stick a multimeter on each driver! Audio Technica have not got back to me, I emailed asked if I could buy the bare driver(s).
 
Most headphone makers aren't big on offering spare parts.
Beyerdynamic is only one I know selling them.
 
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