Headphone works only when pulled out slightly

Sounds like the ground is open circuit, I'd guess the wire has a break where it enters the plug. The effect is that the two positives (left and right) are applied in series across the headphone transducers, causing two out of phase signals to cancel out certain sounds recorded on both L and R channels, like voice as you have found.

When you pull the plug out slightly you are causing only one channel to be applied across both transducers, ie mono in both sides of the headphones, so the phase cancellation effect vanishes.

The solution is to cut off the plug (with a couple of inches of wire to make sure only good cable is left) and fit a new plug. The break could also be at the headphone end or in the middle of the cable, but the plug is the usual suspect.

Dave

Check the sound card settings in the setup program that came with the sound card. Many can be setup to give different jack configurations, including a 5 channel surround mode which will give the symptoms you described.

Sure the headphones have a stereo plug fitted - some headsets don't. A quick compare of it and one that works should be obvious.

You may just have an out of mechanical tolerance plug or / and socket. Find a small O-Ring to put on the plug to keep it from going all the way in.

Hugh

Thanks for all these helpful replys.

My sound card is already set to "Headphone". I visually compared the plug with others, they are the same. The ground connection from the plug up to the volume control is good. The open circuit theory sounds very promising though. I didn't check the connection beyond the volum control.

Well, I gave up and will settle with the O ring method.

Thanks again for all the replys.

I just had this same problem....I finally noticed that the tip of the headphone jack was beveled into a narrower diameter compared to most other headphone plugs and that when I plugged it in fully inserted, the tip did not make contact. The tip feeds the left headphone by the way.

You can open the speaker and try to bend the little tabs on the jack or just get another headphone.

The standards for these mini plugs appear to be very loose and I have seen these compatability issues.

Mark