Faulty DS Lite headphone jacks?

[Jorpho]

I'm thinking there might be a loose connection in the headphone jack of my DS Lite. Sometimes while playing, if I happen to wiggle the jack the right way or even tap the area next to the Start and Select buttons, suddenly the sound will become substantially "fuller". I'm not sure what it is, exactly; maybe it's something to do with surround mixing. (I notice it particularly with Elite Beat Agents.)

I don't think my headphones are at faulty; they're a Koss R/80, a rather high-end model, and I've never had problems with them before.

Are problems like this with the DS Lite headphone jack known to occur?

[skaar]

The rules of troubleshooting would suggest you should try another set of headphones.

[Jorpho]

A logical step, indeed. However, the only other headphones I have are cheap dollar-store things, and while I cannot replicate the problem with them, I do not trust them to be capable of producing the "fuller" sound at all. (Still, it's definitely not a minor fluctuation in sound quality I'm talking about here.)

I guess no one's heard of this specific problem with the DS Lite? Does the problem I'm describing sound at all familiar in general terms?

[Bassgrabber]

Does your computer have a speaker/headphone jack? Possibly an auxiliary one in the front?

[skaar]

That sounds like a contact issue. Have you tried cleaning the jack out?

[Jorpho]

Does your computer have a speaker/headphone jack? Possibly an auxiliary one in the front?

Oh yes, I use them with my computer all the time. (Specifically, I plug them into the volume control of my Logitech 2.1 setup.) If I'm not mistaken, I still get the full sound regardless of how I wiggle the cord in the jack, unless I pull it most of the way out.


That sounds like a contact issue. Have you tried cleaning the jack out?

Now, that's interesting. The headphone jack (i.e., the one at the end of the headphone cord) looks clean, but it didn't occur to me try try to clean out the jack in the DS. It also looks clean if I shine a bright light into it, but it's worth a try. Any suggestions on how to do so?

[Jorpho]

This was getting on my nerves enough that I ordered a new cord for my headphones recently. Alas, it did not improve the situation.

I'm thinking this might be a surround sound issue, actually. You know how if you plug a mono speaker into a stereo jack and wiggle the connector in just the right way, you can get both channels to come out of the single speaker? Well, what if this is the same way?

Are you supposed to be able to plug a surround sound system into the DS Lite headphone jack? If not, why exactly do some games have a surround sound option at all? Do things like this tend to happen with stereo speakers in other surround sound setups?