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[Moogie]

Windows 7

Something really weird happened whilst I was watching Youtube videos today, all of the audio suddenly became really quiet and sounded like it was underwater. I checked my headphone cord, plugged it into a different jack, and even rebooted my PC. Nothing fixed it.

What's really weird is, you'd expect if one of the channels died that you'd have 1 working speaker, and 1 dead one. Right? Either the left or right channel fails and you only hear sound from the working speaker. But that's NOT what's happening: I hear audio from BOTH speakers... and only both speakers. If I set the audio balance in my system settings to either 100% Left or 100% Right, and test both channels, I'll hear the *Bloop!* from an exact center of both speakers, followed by absolute silence. It sounds exactly the same no matter which side I put the balance on. In other words, my PC appears to be only outputting mono audio, and it made this switch in the middle of me watching a video.

Anyone encountered this before? My headphones are Sennheiser HD215. Presumably they are still in perfect working order, unless they have some weeeeeeeird combo-circuitry that shoves everything into a mono channel if something goes wrong. I dunno, but that makes no sense to me.

Help!

[Moogie]

Replying to my own topic as an update.

I guess one of the speakers really did die. I think it's the right one. I'm unsure because it really sounds centralised, so it's incredibly hard to tell. But I tried the headphones in another PC and get the same problem, so it's not my machine. I've borrowed a friend's headset and it's working fine.

I'm really bummed about this. Sennheiser is a brilliant brand and I've had these phones for years, even just recently purchased replacement pads for them rather than buying a new set because they've just been so reliable. Sod's law this would happen just a couple of months later. But I'm going to take the ear apart and see if there's any soldering to be done. They weren't cheap and I'd rather try to repair them, than dump them. Even if I end up making a mess of it!

[Heron TSG]

Alas, this is what is happening to my current speakers. My problem lies in the soldering within the jack itself though, so it should be fixable. Are you sure it's not an intermittent connection somewhere along the line?

[Moogie]

I'll need to do more testing to make sure. I re-plugged the jack several times, so I'm fairly certain it's not a break there. But the two ear wires are hidden within the plastic shell and lead out as a single cable, so it's going to be a bitch to find the break if it's not in the earpiece itself.