Does anyone know why a sansa sandisk c150 will not play the vocals in some songs or the music in other songs?

Question

It worked fine for 6 months when, suddenly, all songs started to sound weird. It does not matter if the mp3 is played thru a car stereo or headphones. We have deleted and redownloaded songs, but that does not help either. We do not have the receipt of when we bought it so I am S.O.L. there.

Thanks for anyone's help on this.

Answer 1

It has to do with the headphone jack in your MP3 player. It has most likely lost its ground connection (caused by excess stress to the headphone jack, like repeated plugging and unplugging) and is creating sound from the difference between left and right audio (since vocals are usually equal on both left and right audio, the difference would mean the vocals are gone, same goes for lead instruments). You probably notice that things aren't in stereo anymore. If you upload a mono MP3 to your player, it will probably sound normal (aside from being in mono, of course). It could just be a cold solder joint or the whole jack may need to be replaced. Either way requires a steady hand and access to a low wattage soldering iron and should not be attempted by the electronics novice. Converting all your MP3s to mono would be a stop gap measure but if it already sounds like this, that means the jack is loose and you could eventually lose all audio altogether.