How to Fix Earphones: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Music Back

There are few things in life as disheartening as firing up your smartphone or Bluetooth device of choice, only to find that your earphones aren’t working anymore. Unfortunately, if you’ve ended up here, chances are good that exactly that has happened to you. And chances are just as good that you’re looking to solve the problem yourself without shelling out for a new pair of earphones.

To get to the answers you’re looking for, we first have to ask a couple of important questions: are your earphones completely silent, or are they dead on one side and fine on the other? Are you hearing crackling noises or cutouts? And perhaps more importantly, are your earphones wired or wireless?

For Wired Earphones

If your earphones are connected to cables that plug into a headphone jack (remember those?), those cables are likely the source of any dropouts or scratchy sound you might be hearing. The good news is, you might be able to fix the cable itself with a replacement headphone jack, some solder, and a few shrink tubes. Before you go through the trouble, it’s probably a good idea to test the cable at a few spots with a multimeter to find where the cable might be shorting out.

The bad news is, depending on the price of your earphones, this may not be worth the extra effort.

What’s worse, the shorted cable may actually be inside the casing of your earphones. If you’re feeling pretty adventurous, you might be able to open the casing, find the short, and solder it yourself. Just know that if your earphones are water resistant, you may be undoing that resistance by cracking the case.

But before you do any soldering or case-cracking of any sort, the very first thing you should do is borrow a portable media player or smartphone that has a headphone jack from a friend or family member, and make doubly sure that your earphones are to blame to begin with.

For Wireless Earphones

If your earphones aren’t of the wired variety and you’re still experiencing dropouts, connectivity problems, or outright silence, you’ve probably already guessed that cables aren’t the problem.

But wait, what if they are? Were you using the Everplay-X feature of your Phiaton wireless earphones when the problems arose? First thing’s first, check to make sure that your earphones work well when connected via Bluetooth. If they do, you may just need a replacement Everplay-X cable. If so, contact support@phiaton.com or call 1 (866) 313-3203.

If you’re sure it’s your Bluetooth connection that’s giving you fits, you may find that your earphones don’t need to be fixed at all; it may be your phone that needs a bit of TLC. First thing’s first, try updating your phone’s operating system.

If that doesn’t work, try disabling Bluetooth, rebooting your phone, and attempting the connection again once everything is powered back up. If that doesn’t work, you may need to force your phone to forget the Bluetooth connection and start pairing from scratch, or as a last-ditch effort, reset all of your network settings.

For more information about fixing a faulty wireless connection between your phone and earphones, see this post.

By Dennis Burger

 April 26, 2019

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Tell-Tale Signs You Need New Wireless Headphones