In light of last week’s hot topic, I thought it would be useful to ask Burson directly for additional data about these issues and share it here. I asked them two main questions – how widespread the ‘headphone destroyer’ issue is and why they recommend that specific method of unplugging/plugging headphones.
For the ‘headphone destroyer’ part…
"There have been one or two cases of headphones being damaged due to a badly soldered part on the main PCB. These are one or two out of a lot of Soloist 3X we have produced and in each case, we have replaced the customer’s headphones.
Please use our Soloist 3X with confidence as our QC is second to none and we’ll continue to look after our customers as we have done in the past. In many cases, we have looked after customers well beyond their warranty terms."
For the unplugging/plugging method (re:connect headphones before power-on/disconnect headphones after power-off)…
"Regarding your questions below. It is always better to disconnect something when the electronic is switched off. You won’t want to disconnect speaker cables while the power amp is live and the same goes for high power headphone amps such as the Soloist.
We also recommend removing the headphone jack after each use so that the spring mechanism inside can return to its natural state. This won’t make any difference initially but it makes a difference to the quality of connection after many long years of use."
Unfortunately, most of the response here isn’t as thorough as I had hoped, but this is what I got.