Is there any reason why a perfectly good pair of headphones (Sennheiser Momentum) will be seemingly fine when plugged into a 3.5mm jack (for instance, my iPhone), but completely bomb when plugged in to a 1/4" adapter for use with Hi Fi or (more importantly) my Focusrite Saffire monitor output?
When I use the 1/4" adapter with the Momentum headphones everything is tinny, quiet and crackles/spikes intermittently. I'm not just talking about a steady stream of poor audio quality - I mean a very unstable connection.
As I said, without the 1/4" adapter (into an iPhone) everything is dandy. I've tested the 1/4" adapter on other headphones with no problems. For instance, I tried a pair of Sennheiser HD25's with the same 1/4" adapter which sounds fine.
Is it possible that the extra functionality on the Momentum (a volume control which I presume sends commands down the wire to mp3 devices) is the bad apple? For example, as per this article on Wikipedia, it suggests that compatibility between 3.5mm connectors is not as straight forward as I originally thought.
Any insight on this would be great.