Bought new headphones but sound isn't so clear. Do you know why? (Giveaway inside)

Try a clean test, without any EQ turned on or other additional sound distortion. Try the same earphones on different devices and see if they perform the same way. Compare your previous earphones with your new ones on the same songs, quality and player. Also double check your jack is plugged in all the way down, I know it might sound like a retarded advice, but sometimes a little more push or different positioning of the cable is needed and at neglected at first.

If your headphones perform really bad in the same conditions your previous ones performed much better, you might have a defective pair. Try contacting customer service of the shop you bought them from or Panasonic directly and see what they'll tell you.

Edit: And thanks for the giveaway.

Edit 2: Consider your earphones might need some burning in to sound as they should. Or, just the sound quality of that particular model is bad. Unless they sound really awful and unlistenable, in which case proceed with contacting customer service to claim you have a defective pair.

I always manage to fuck up the cable near the USB port so I don't invest too much in headphones. I probably need wireless...

No idea, if sounds really bad and you think would be sound better conntact with the RMA department in the store you bought it and try luck. Maybe its factory problem.

Clean your ears after a while?

Check the jack of the new headphones and the old ones'. It may have a different number of "lines" (different number of channels), that may be your problem. I have a pair of headphones from a Nokia 5800XM which don't work well (they have that sort of a seashell echo effect) with other devices due to a different layout of the channels.

i suggest exchanging them. might be the headset you bought was defective. if the 2nd pair sound just as bad, then return it altogether & get a better pair of headphones. personally, id save some money & get some headphones that are good for gaming. you can usually purchase some really great headphones for $79 or more depending on what you buy.

i listened to HyperX at PAX & i thought the sound was pretty good for $59 there. they had it on sale from being regular $79 at amazon. sounded great with music & games. i own a more expensive pair of headphones but i was looking for some cheap headphones for my cousin, who has a very limited budget.

http://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Cloud-Gaming-Headset-KHX-H3CL/dp/B00JJNQG98

Maybe, according to this review, it seems that it's how they work: http://www.head-fi.org/t/691569/new-headphones-sighted-from-panasonic-hx250-hx350-and-hx550
(sorry for the bad english)

Don't know the model. Searched a bit but found no problem.
To be sure if it's a problem with the model or with (specifically) your's, I would make a test with two headphones of the same model.
Am I suggesting that you should buy another one, when you're not even sure it's a good model?? Hell, no!!!
Take a mp3-player to an electronics store (they must sell this model, of course) and ask to test this model.
So you can check one source of sound in two (exact model) headphones. So you should have an idea if your model came broke.
Hope it helps.

Maybe they just need to burn in (dunno if is a myth)

Sound Engineer here,

First of all test the frequency transmission of your headphone. The range of your model is 9Hz to 25 Khz, so just search "9Hz test" and "25Khz test" on youtube and check if you can hear a thing. If not then your headphone is faulty and you should take it back to the store.

Also your HF has quite a bit of impedance (33 Ohm). In some rare cases your HF just simply doesn't get enough "juice". I'm talking about a power hungry system with onboard audio interface drawing power from the main power supply. I use an external audio interface with its own PSU so I never had such a problem.

I would also check the quality of the sound source, the problem might be simply a crappy sound quality which wasn't that much noticeable when using a crappy(er) headphone.

I wouldn't tinker with the EQ settings if you don't know what you're doing, 99% of daily use sounds are already properly mixed and they don't need any enhancements, also throw the SRS HD outta window, it's a ridiculously bad software.