For the past couple of months I have had problems with my headphone cable. It was causing the signal received to be broken, spitty, pulsy or generally poor.
At first I thought it was the headphones. I ruled that out and then suspected it was the headphone socket. Then, no signal at all! I had a spare headphone cable and immediately I could see it was the cable. This surprised me as the cable was very thick and appeared good quality.
Anyway, I continued with the spare thinner headphone cable but the initial problem resumed! Eventually, checking bit by bit I found that it was a combination of a poor quality cable, poor jack and really bad soldering.
(see below pic)
Well, it was obvious I need a new headphone cable and jacks.
I remembered someone I met on a rally, using a Minelab E Trac, telling me that his son had got him a high quality professional audio lead for his headphones and that he had immediately noticed an improvement in the signal tones.
I started to trawl the internet to try and find one to buy and find out if it would make a difference.
I popped in to a busy Music Shop in Cardiff and asked them if they did such a curly headphone lead. I was informed that they stopped doing curly headphones leads as they had so many returned due to faults.
I looked into this and got the advice of someone in the industry. His reply is:
Curly lead are not the best on the output of an amplifiers to speakers as they would increase impedance and so frequencies would alter slightly. The result is poor sound quality.
A straight cable is best, but without coiling it, as again it increases the impedance if coiled.
In my time of being an audio repair engineer for a hirer company I noted that any lead would suffer most where the solder connections were in the connector, so it is a common problem. It's a case of the lead being pulled about and the conductors twisting within the lead that cause this. The more strands in the cable the better, and then if they are twisted this decreases the stress within the connector. Where the solder joints are a tight, cord grip helps as well.
I then got the following cable made. It is extremely high professional grade quality as well as the jacks.
The following two pics detail the Make of the cable and details:
The two pictures below show the quality of the jacks. Compare them to my old lead which is typical of many headphone cable jacks.
I have tried out the new headphone cable and, yes, it does make a big difference! It's the old saying, you get what you pay for!!!!
Your machine is only as good as the weakest link between coil and the signal to your ears (headphones). It is no good having great headphones and a poor quality cable. My advice is to check what you are using and upgrade to the best you can get hold of.
My headphone cable, with jacks and postage, (for hip mount (48")) cost me about £11. I would estimate that 8 to 10' would be required for a normal length lead. (stretch your existing lead for measurement)
I can recommend Stuart at the following firm to assist you with making something to your requirements. Tell him it's for metal detecting headphones and he'll know what's required....
http://www.ultimateproaudio.co.uk/E-mail:
sales@ultimateproaudio.co.uk