# Audio weirdness in headphones?



## Elronnd (Jul 2, 2018)

Hello all.  I've noticed some weirdness in the audio, but only when it's playing through headphones (tried multiple headphones, same result).  First of all, in the cyberpunk 2077 trailer, the audio is distorted.  I've tried multiple music players, same result.  I've tried transcoding it into myriad formats (comes in opus, I've tried wav, flac, mp3).  However, converting it to mono audio makes it sound fine.

The second, and more pressing problem, is that when I try to play a tv show, again tried with multiple players, the dialogue is much quiter than the music and it's very difficult to understand.  IDK if the equalization is different.  I enabled the builtin equalizer for aux output and have tried messing with bass and treble values, but it doesn't help.

If I use external speakers, or the builtin ones (it's a laptop) then it sounds fine.


----------



## k.jacker (Jul 2, 2018)

I'd first check if audio works right outside Xorg and desktop environment.
If you have mplayer installed (since you said you tried multiple player) just run on the console
`mplayer somesong.mp3` and see if sound is right.
Even better might be to test with a stupid audioplayer like audio/mpg321.


----------



## shepper (Jul 2, 2018)

Elronnd said:


> If I use external speakers, or the builtin ones (it's a laptop) then it sounds fine.


Are you using the same jack for the external speakers as the headphone or are you using USB speakers?


----------



## Elronnd (Jul 2, 2018)

It's the same jack for headphones as for speakers, yes.  I will try without X soon.


----------



## shepper (Jul 2, 2018)

If your external speakers are fine, it suggests a problem with the headphones.  One potential problem is that newer headphone/microphone jacks use a 4 pin jack while the external speakers have a 3 pin jack.  If the pins do not line up who knows what will come out?  To check, place the two jacks side by side.


----------



## Elronnd (Jul 3, 2018)

But it's the same problem with multiple headphones, _and_ these headphones work fine not in freebsd.


----------



## Jumplow (Jul 8, 2018)

Very interesting issue. Mono and Stereo are two different things. I have a question.

Does it sound 'Mono' on your speakers as well? Try using a chord progression generator and play around with it.

Also just to be clear, 'Mono' doesn't mean that sound is coming just from one speaker. It means it's more centralized or almost dead centre (Sound is more in the middle of your speakers instead of being wide like it would normally).


----------

