Any diy hifi buffs on here?

[Markymark]

Spent ages tryng to find a kids CD player for our 3yo as she loves music that also has a USB port so we can give her lots of music.

Found a great one. Got her headphones as a present only to find no headphone socket!!

Rather than ditching it thought I'd give some electronics a whirl and add one. Found a switching socket from maplins, drilled a hole, wired it up and all good...nearly!

I used the speak cables, +ve and -ve from each. Headphones though had a common ground. This meant 4 wires into 3. So I used both +ve into the headphones and one of the -ve. It sort of works, one headphone speaker perfect, other very quiet.

The speakers have independent black cables but the headphones need only one.

How do I get aroubd this?

 

[ColinJ]

Now there's a coincidence ...

My old boom box's CD player broke a few weeks back and yesterday I was looking for a replacement for turbo trainer duties. I found a few that looked interesting, some with USB and some with Bluetooth, but I noted the lack of a headphone socket. I toyed with the idea of doing what you have done but decided against it. Maybe I would do it if I got one very cheap on eBay but I don't want to hack up a new machine.

As for your problem ... I was trying to work out what you might have done wrong. I suppose the first thing is to check that you have soldered the wires on properly. (You DID solder them, didn't you, rather than just wrapping the wires round the terminals? )

The ground on the headphone socket should be the part that makes contact with the long bit at the back of the plug. The tip and middle will be the left and right signals.

 

[Markymark]

Thanks. Yes all properly soldered. It boils down to speakers have independant black but headphones wants common.

I could make the headphones mono but that seems silly.

 

[sight-pin]

I don't really know anything about electronics but i have noticed that some headphones are fitted with a four section contact jack plug and others just three sections.
if yours only have a three section would a four section pair work?

 

[Markymark]

I don't really know anything about electronics but i have noticed that some headphones are fitted with a four section contact jack plug and others just three sections.
if yours only have a three section would a four section pair work?

never seen 4 section jack before now? Certainly not on any of the headphones I have aroubd the house.

 

[sight-pin]

Ah correction, It's my iphone headphones that has the four section plug, thought it was my pair of phones. apologies.

 

[Markymark]

Ah correction, It's my iphone headphones that has the four section plug, thought it was my pair of phones. apologies.

Ah yes, probably the mic.

 

[slowmotion]

If you don't do something to attenuate the signal from the speaker output, you are likely to blow the headphones and your eardrums into the middle of next year.

 

[Markymark]

If you don't do something to attenuate the signal from the speaker output, you are likely to blow the headphones and your eardrums into the middle of next year.

It's a very small unit. The headphones are actually pretty quiet when I've tested it?

 

[slowmotion]

It's a very small unit. The headphones are actually pretty quiet when I've tested it?

It might be OK if the headphones have a really high impedance. I would check the volume level once you have sorted out the wiring glitch, and start with the volume control on zero, NOT 11.

 

[Markymark]

Thsnks. No it's been done for a while and volumes all good. One speaker quieiter than other which I believe is this common black wire problem as it switches depending on which if the 2 blacks I use.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

No need to thank me, the knowledge of her music pleasure is all I need

 

[Crackle]

Buy a decent unit you cheap southern git.

 

[Markymark]

Buy a decent unit you cheap southern git.

Ha! This is a kid friendly one, easy to use. The only one I could find that had a usb socket.

 

[Markymark]

View attachment 109391

No need to thank me, the knowledge of her music pleasure is all I need

Where do the CDs go?