Magic Broken Headphones

[BJBMK2]

I've got me these headphones, right Cab? Right? That's the opening line of this post.

There quite old, chewed up, need replacing. Normally in the past, I know it's bad when everything starts shifting over to one channel, usually the left, and you have to fiddle with the jack to get it working properly. But these ones have been doing these kind of, remix type shit. I dunno if it's cos they can no longer handle proper bass response, but I've noticed it's bringing up certain instruments in the mix.

Mostly it creates a sort of karaoke version of what I'm listening to, by burying the vocals behind digital distortion, but sometimes it'll just be the drumbeat, or just bass and drums etc, seems to vary all the time. The best way I can explain it, is like those Classic Album documentaries, where you have an engineer sliding faders up and down, to randomly bring up different instruments and bits of the mix.

Is this a common thing? And is there any software that can replicate this? Cos it's kinda cool, and I don't wanna replace the wire just yet, I'm enjoying the lucky dip remixes I'm getting.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

I think I sometimes get that with stuff from the 60s/70s where whole instruments are panned more harshly to the left/right iirc. But if you aren't listening to stuff from then then I dunno really

[BJBMK2]

It has some cool results when it comes to dodgy stereo mixing. Not a track from the period you cited, but I had on Meet James Ensor, by TMBG, which is mixed in a very bizarre way, where you've got this frantic drumbeat mixed directly in one channel, and everything else in the other.

My magic headphones decided to just concern itself with the drumbeat, so it inadvertently turned the track into some kind of jungle remix.

[holyzombiejesus]

Going from the title, genuinely thought this would be about molluscs favourite new band.

[Uncle TechTip]

It's something to do with removing high frequencies probably. That removes much of the vocal but leaves the lower instruments. I know the effect you mean and I could get it on a Walkman just by pulling the jack out a bit.

[TheAssassin]

You have lost one of the stereo channels, and older songs had vocals and other instruments on different channels.  I had an old karaoke machine that played cassettes and had a switch that would play either full stereo or either of the stereo channels.  Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix without the vocals is m favourite.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think it involves losing a channel. What's being described is 'inverted phase' which you can get if you wire one if your speakers backwards, resulting in an awkward 'bubble' of no sound in the middle. On headphones it probably relates to a signal wire being short to ground meaning you only get the 'difference' between the left and right channel.

It's kind of how early surround sound worked.



This configuration is bad for certain amplifier types so don't assume I'm advocating it.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Try cleaning the headphones jack and the socket it goes into with electrical contact cleaner.

[BJBMK2]

Holy fuck! My laptop speakers just started breifly doing this too!

Am I..

Am I cursed?

Who did I piss off?

[momatt]

Holy fuck! My laptop speakers just started breifly doing this too!

Am I..

Am I cursed?

Who did I piss off?

It's probably just a ghost or something.

[Shaxberd]

I once had a haunted guitar amp that could pick up Spanish radio, always check the wiring for ghosts.

[lazyhour]

Once when I was lying in bed at about age 14, my CD-cassette-radio suddenly played a blast of police radio, much louder than the super-quiet volume I'd set it to go to sleep to. Still freaks my nut out to this day.