Strange sound effect on Clip+.

[sexton]

Hi,
My Clip+ has started putting the vocalist (especially the  females) behind the band in an echoing tunnel at a reduced volume. The instruments are fine.
I've reloaded the Sansa firmware and the latest Rockbox.
Is it a hardware problem? Fixable?

[gbl08ma]

Make sure that the setting found on Sound Settings -> Channel Configuration isn't set to Karaoke. It clearly does what you described for many audio - the idea is to provide a karaoke-like vocals removal, but it is far from perfect...

[bertrik]

If it also happens in the sansa original firmware, it's probably a hardware problem.

A possible cause is a loose "common" contact in the headphone jacket or plug. This makes the sound in the left and right channel exactly the same with loss of instruments that are normally in the center of the sound field.

[sexton]

I've done more research today and it just gets stranger.If i plug powered speakers into the clip+ everything works fine.When i plug in headphones the clip+ goes into karaoke mode and won't change back to normal stereo and the mono settings are almost silent.When it's plugged into the powered speakers all the sound configurations work as they should.Next step test resistive versus capacitive connection for the headphones.

[saratoga]

Shorted out headphone wires.

[bertrik]

Your symptoms are still consistent with a flaky common connection between the headphones and the player (not with shorted out headphone wires IMO).
This way, it appears as if the L and R speakers in the headphones are wired in series receiving the difference of the L and R signal (L-R). Any signal common to the L and R signals will be cancelled out and both headphones carry the same signal, explaining the karaoke effect (vocals are often equally present in the L and R channel, except for some reverb). A mono signal is defined by L=R, so that's consistent (L-R=0) with the mono setting being silent.

Is this pair of headphones still working OK on other players?

Perhaps there's something bent inside the socket, and the plug of the powered speaker is a bit thicker (so still making contact) than the headphones plug.

[sexton]

Well I finally pulled myself together disassembled my clip+ and poked around until i found that if i bridged the outermost headphone socket connector to the pad around the mounting screw the sound came back to what it should be, so a little solder bridge has fixed it.