recently, I've been unable to use on-ears for my DD since allergy season is in full swing (shoutout ATX, fuck whoever decided to plant SO many male trees) and my ears are swollen to a pucker. I've been using the ath-m50x as my main pair and they've been hitting most of my checkboxes (good noise isolation (I suffer from APD so I need as much as I can get), very equal distribution of clarity/detail for all instruments (including bass instruments), good sub-bass thickness that doesn't bleed out, etc), but there's one REALLY weird problem I've been having with them...
they require a LOT of drive to even produce audible levels, despite very low impedance and high sensitivity.the issue is, it ONLY does this on my R4, NOTHING else. my phone and my laptop can easily drive it, every other pair of IEM/OE work perfectly fine with the AR4 (including my HD650's, which, although not having as low sensitivity as one would expect imo,
still packs around 300 ohms compared to the m50x's measly 36 ohms.
now i'll be the first to admit, I'm pretty new when it comes to REALLY understanding the science and reasoning behind audio and electricals, so i'm open to anything i might not be privy to right now that's causing this, but from my understanding, this makes ABSOLUTELY zero sense.
for reference, in order to get audio volume + drive around where I like it with the m50x's:
Gain = High
Volume (1-100) = 68-80 (<50 is completely inaudible)
Also, my Pre-amp gain is set at ~ -4.7 in Poweramp
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated