After a brief listening session at low volume with my Focal Clear MG Professional headphones (connected to an RME Babyface Pro FS, RME ADI-2 DAC FS, various Violectric models, and a Niimbus US5 Pro), the sound quality deteriorated significantly and has not recovered for over six months.
I apologize if the translation isn’t entirely accurate, I’m using a translation tool.
Background: I listen to my headphones through my laptop (they sounded great with it), and I broke them in using the laptop as well, following the manufacturer’s recommendation, and the sound consistently improved in every way with each break-in session. Then I listened to various DACs and amplifiers at an audio store, and the headphones started to sound bad (I didn’t like the sound of any of the devices I listened to in the store). After that, I broke them in again using the laptop, hoping the sound would fully recover, but that didn’t happen. During subsequent break-in sessions, they sound better or worse depending on the music I’m using to break them in. The local service center didn’t find any issues with them (they only measured the frequency response and compared it to a reference) and said there was nothing else they could do to help. So essentially, the problem isn’t with the frequency response, but with something else. I asked them to measure the transient response, but they said they didn’t have the necessary software for that.
Right now, the headphones sound very muddy, with very slow attacks in the low and mid frequencies; the detail has also dropped significantly, and they sound very muffled in the mid frequencies around 500 Hz. Also, the frequency response doesn’t feel even.
Please let me know exactly what caused this and if it can be fixed in any way.