I may have a severe case of bad luck or something weird is going on here

I’d have the electricity checked out just to be sure that’s not where the problem is.

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Will do that after holidays. I have to find some trustworthy electrician too. Its kinda insane, but electricity in my country is not really taken seriously in residential applications, that’s why 99% of houses are not even grounded or doesn’t follow any installation standards.

This is may be the cause for all your electronics issues - monitor, OLEDs, cans…

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The OLEDs were known issues that happened to some panels, the monitor I don’t really know what happened, it started retaining images and the corners bleed, but I wasn’t even on this apartment when it started happening, the first oled too, it was a defect that appeared after the TV made the 2000h refresh.

It may be related, that’s why I’ll call someone to take a look at it, but the power never behaved weirdly.

But anyway, thanks everyone for the suggestions, they’re all really helpful! In reality I’ll probably never know what happened, and I hope the next headphone lasts a little longer :slight_smile:

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Well, there is your problem. I am not an electrician or electrical enigneer. From my tinkering in circuits, Floating Ground could mean every device is at some random potential to each other. This could totally cause high current (milli amps, but still) to flow via anything providing a path to lower ground potential.

In real world, this means any switchmode PSU that is not 100% built by the book (= 90% of consumer electronics) is a potential “death trap” for the weakest link.

Two “workarrounds”:

  1. Build your own ground. The metal pipes under the kitchen sink work as a ground, same with central heating (assuming it uses circulating hot water and not steam or air).
    Anything audio has its grounds connected anyway. So just one RCA or TRS cable in an unused port is enough to provide a connection to your grounding system.
    On computer cases, wrapping some wire arround a case screw works.

  2. Put expensive electronics behind an isolation transformer. That way the device does not have a ground potential as it is “on a different plane”.
    Note that this will still make them part of a potential path to ground.

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As far as I know, most people connect the ground pin on wall outlets to the neutral. I noticed when I plug the sony on to the amp or directly into my motherboard, and where there’s absolute silent and with ANC on, I can hear a faint electrical buzzing that goes away if I touch any metal part on my pc, monitor or the amp itself. I believe that this is ground loop right?

I’ll have to call an electrician to see what’s a good workaround for grounding here, because we don’t have central heating (it’s hot here, winter is always above 15ºC) and we use PVC piping.

Guess it’s really bad luck that it went 3 times to the headphone, because I always lived in houses like that and before the HD660s I had a M50 that lasted me 6 years, it’s still working actually, just gave it to my brother :stuck_out_tongue:

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In what country you connect the ground to the neutral ? The last building i saw that was build in 1960

Hellow, fellow static electricity generators. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, I might be wrong but I believe computers and other components are able to survive a lot of things. But amps… will amplify, therefore multiply the possible electric problems in your house, or the static electricity if you ever “give a static shock” to the RCA inputs of your amp and grill it like I did. Or in your case, break your headphones.

Instead of giving thousands of dollars to an electrician you don’t even trust in a place where electricity isn’t even taken seriously (oof), maybe… get a linear power supply. :man_shrugging:

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Yeah you have power/grounding issues. Until you get those fixed you’ll continue having random electronics failures.

What’s happening when you touch something is you’re providing an electrical ground for it. That’s why the buzzing goes away.

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Welcome to Brazil, man!

At least calling someone can be a little cheaper here, usually when you have to buy stuff that it gets expensive. My cousin works with hospital equipment and he probably knows some good electrician that can come here and take a look, I’ll give him a call.

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I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do apart from building a house or renting a place with decent grounding.
This building is 30 years old and they use the neutral as ground, even the shower doesn’t have grounding (yep, we use electrical showers, basically a death sentence).

The only “grounding” on the building is not available to actual residents, only for the lift to work.

So much bad luck that I started having those problems now, basically lived my entire life in houses like that and never had anything die like that

Ok, I’m going to give you some bad advice. Take a wire, wrap it around a screw and screw it to the floor. Connect the other end to chassis screws on your audio devices.

You would be surprised how much a computer can survive.

Put everything on an isolation transformer. Or at least the audio equipment.

This here is a “fancy” with a UK outlet and switchable ground passthrough. Much simpler units exist.


Concerning earthing installations:


I would use a metal water pipe, faucet, etc.

I’m thinking the OP is in a room where these are not available. But then again, he may be in the bathroom so the options are almost endless lol.

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Yeah, I’m literally on the other end of the apartment. I can’t easily pull a wire from a fauced to my room. A workaround that I’ve seen is to make a hole in the wall until you find the steel structure of the bulding, but I’ve seen some people talking that this isn’t really safe.

I believe that those isolation transformers may be the best option.

If I ditch the amp and plug the heaphone directly to the PC, could it be safer? I’m thinking because inside the PC there are more ways that the current can go, I’m probably talking nonsense, but I don’t see much that I can do

Really the best option is to run a wire to the bathroom and attach it to a pipe. Just run it along where the wall and floor meet so it’s out of the way. You can also tape it down with masking tape so it doesn’t trip you.

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Just checked my bathroom and all the pipes running there are made of PVC, the faucet itself is steel but it’s connected to pvc stuff, so I don’t think it will do much. Unfortunately there’s not much I can do really :confused: as I’ve been researching, this is a common problem for people who live in apartments here.

Do you think if I don’t use the amp for now it will be safer? I can sacrifice a little bit of SQ, the HD660s is not that dependent on a amp as far as I know.

Are you on the first floor? My “ground” for my camp in the woods is just a thick wire going to a large piece of metal “planted” in the… ground.

I’d “ground” my UPS to the “ground”.

You could also get another dac/amp combo, something portable, rechargeable, unplug it when you use it (xduoo xd-05, fiio BTR5, or even invest in a DAP).

Or get clean power to you with something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-Portable-Power-Station-Generator/dp/B07D29QNMJ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pure+sine+station&qid=1608900957&sr=8-3

Or a solar panel, a battery and a cheap pure sine power inverter, even:
https://www.amazon.com/BESTEK-300Watt-Power-Inverter-Adapter/dp/B07KQ4Q2L5/ref=mp_s_a_1_18?dchild=1&keywords=pure+sine+station&qid=1608900957&sr=8-18

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I’m on the 11th floor D: I was thinking on a battery powered dac/amp, but if it’s connected via USB to the pc, won’t it be able to damage the headphone again? I’m asking this because the FiiO K3 was powered through usb only, and it still damaged the first HD660s and the K702. Do you know a battery powered amp that has a optical in? That is not terribly expensive too, I believe this would be the best option.

I did some further investigation here, and found that the neutral is indeed grounded, but the wall outlets doesn’t have anything connected to the ground pin, so I don’t have even the barest grounding here. I’ll call an electrician to check if it’s safe to pull a wire from the power box (dunno how it’s actually called in english) to the outlets, or if the neutral wire running on the walls are thick enough to handle the grounding.

The law asks that at least the neutral should be grounded, but no one actually wires the ground pin, go figure. And also, all you have to do for the power distribution company turns on your electricity is have a hole in front of your house, that’s why people don’t even bother shoving a rod and connecting it.

I do believe I live in a pretty good apartment and it has a good power for what you find here in Brazil, but I’ve seen some horrifying stuff. Taking showers with live wires exposed are basically child’s play here.