Display MoreAre you seriously saying that using a longer wire with your headphones gives you latency issues than a short wire?
Trying to look beyond the ridiculous, this could be helpful. One of the guys mentioned earlier in the thread the way that treble response on the leading edge of the note is the first thing you hear. If the treble response is dulled, it can potentially make it harder to detect where the leading edge of the note starts.
What it could be is a crap quality lead that loses some of the top end frequency response so again you lose the clarity on pick attack. No latency, just filtering. That's what was got at earlier.
Don't take this the wrong way because it's not meant to be but...... have you had your hearing tested for top end response? That's what goes first. You'll notice it less with valves (tube amps) because you inevitably end up cranking the bloody thing to window shaking levels because that's where it sounds best. Damage is caused. When you listen to things at lower volumes (like you do with KPA because it sounds good at lower levels) then the top end gets swamped by the low and you lose the first bit of the note.
I'm not saying anything specific about the phones extension yet, I don't know yet for sure why yet It is definitely a factor though. And you are probably right about the connection because it is crackling a lot, but not in a shorted wire kind of way. Sounds like noise that a dirty connection makes, which would likely mean corrosion inside. That could definitely mess with response and/or high end. I need to buy some contact cleaner, haven't tried that yet. I've been doing what Monkey suggested and trying to take breaks from this intermittently. The notion of my ears being worn from age is an interesting one though. I suppose that's possible, but I doubt the culprit here because I'm fine playing my practice tube amp and low volume levels. As I said, it is looking like more than one thing is in play but for sure probably the largest is this phones extension. I can't explain why for certain at the moment. Besides the connector, I also wonder if maybe the sheer age of the copper inside has severely corroded. I live in the hot, humid Southeast US and let me tell you, something 20 years old that spent a lot of time in closet storage can grow some interesting things. I only dragged this blasted extension out because the KPA was sitting a distance away as I haven't re-arranged my desktop to accommodate it (not knowing whether I would be keeping it). So I put an extension into the KPA back when I ran into a problem profilng a particular test amp (it was becoming too much of a PITA to exchanging the phones between the DAW interface and the KPA, so I dragged the extension out of the closet not thinking about any adverse impacts in the testing process)
A bit of an aside but I'll share this: Back probably 25 years ago I bought some heavy duty copper speaker wires (10 or 12 gauge) and made my own guitar speaker cables. I ended up using both of them for a while but abandoned a 2nd 4x12 cab for gigs and tossed one of the cables into non climate controlled storage. A few years back I got another 4x12 cab and was doing some testing and breaking-in the speakers. In doing this I recalled the other cable and dragged it out of storage. It sounded like hell and I 100% assure you it did not sound like this when it was first made. To make a long story short, when I got under some good lighting and used a magnifying glass you could see through the translucent casing everything had been majorly corroded and turned green. Connectors were fine, solder joints fine, no crackling. Just a consistently horrid sound. Night and day to the cable that was kept inside under climate controlled conditions (which also had some corrosion but nothing like the other one). Anyway, I don't know the science of all this, but cables DO matter. Speaker, guitar, even power. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not speaking from real first hand experience. Go ahead and actually do the test, not cite science or what you've read on the internet. Go do the real work. Go buy a handful of cables and test them for yourself. You'll be quite surprised how both sound and/or feel can be impacted by a cable - by the type and the length. Give it a try some time, you'll discover new and interesting ways to tailor your tone and feel.
