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My stereo earphones with a micro 3.5mm connector were working perfectly and then suddenly the voices were muffled and I could only hear the music.

I looked around and followed a lot of solutions, and one that worked for me was to go the sound options -> levels and fiddle with the balance.

Weirdly enough, the muffled voice was only happening when the two channels were equal or in very close vicinity of each other. For example, if I move Channel 2 to 0, and Channel 1 to 100 or vice versa, sound appears perfect.

But I can't mix this balance on my smartphone which makes my earphones unusable there. And I don't understand why this would happen? How can I get it to work in equal stereo mode? Or why is this happening exactly?

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This sounds like your headphone jack isn't plugged in all the way or that it is but something is shorting out the two channels.

The top part of the jack is ground so if it's not plugged in all the way then that means that one of the signal sleeves is touching ground inside the female portion of the jack which means it will play only the difference between the two channels instead. This often sounds like the voices are dropped out because they are mixed equally between the two channels but the instruments might not be perfectly equally mixed (they'll sound worse though).

I described the failure being between the male and female portions of the jack but it could easily be inside the cord too if that's been damaged.

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  • So, if it can't be fixed by fiddling around with the jack, my only option is to drop stereo and just listen to one channel?
    – kenwaterbaron
    May 30, 2019 at 16:18
  • Can you try different headphones just to rule out that it's something the matter with that pair? Additionally can you try the "bad" headphones on some other device. With those two experiments you should be able to deduce if it's the headphones or the jack.
    – Brad
    May 30, 2019 at 16:21
  • As mentioned in my answer, the earphones won't work on my Huawei P20 Lite too. Also, I tried another pair of earphones on my laptop which works fine. So I reckon it is the earphones.
    – kenwaterbaron
    May 30, 2019 at 16:23
  • In that case, I think I will just have to drop stereo and balance so that only one channel is 100, the other is 0. One quick question, if I'm listening to only one channel, how can I hear voices in both the (L & R) speakers? Isn't one channel for L and the other for R?
    – kenwaterbaron
    May 30, 2019 at 16:24
  • If (for example) you have the balance set to Left 100%/Right 0% and the jack is not making proper contact then both channels will be playing the difference between each other instead of the different between their signal channel and ground. If you're headphones are doing that and they don't work in another phone then it does sound like the jack/the cord is broken. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where without being with the headphones though, unfortunately.
    – Brad
    May 30, 2019 at 16:39

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