iPods eating earbuds?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 05 March 2007 05:32

Your IT - Home IT

Reports are circulating concerning one-sided failures - most commonly on the right - of earbuds used with Apple's market-leading iPods.

The problem is not limited to the earbuds that the company provides, as owners of upmarket as well as bargain-basement replacements are having similar experiences.

It is clear that the fault is affecting the earbuds themselves, as they fail to work properly when plugged into a different piece of equipment.

One theory is that it may be caused by a short-circuit occurring when the jack is pulled from the iPod during play. If this is the cause, it is consistent with the order of connections on the jack.

A common suggestion is that the affected users are burning out the earbuds by listening at excessive volume levels. Many of them deny that, and in any case that does not explain why the right earbud is more commonly affected.

Another theory is that there is a DC bias on the right output, causing that earbud to burn out. If that was the problem, we would have expected someone with the appropriate experience and equipment to make a definitive determination.

This writer's iPod gets through a pair of earbuds every two or three months with one-sided failures, but so far he has put the problem down to mechanical damage caused by snagging the cord.