help Headphones only work when plugged in halfway.

[Jerememe]

I own a pair of Audio Technica ATH-500x headphones. Ever since I got them, they only work with my computer if the aux cord is plugged in halfway. If I plug it in all the way, I get this really weird effect where I can't hear vocals in most songs, yet I can hear the instrumentals. However, some songs play perfectly fine, like Beatles songs for some reason.

The headphones are also in mono since they aren't plugged in all the way. I've tried cleaning the aux cord, installing and reinstalling drivers, repositioning the cable in every single way and cleaning the female 3.5mm cable. It's not my pc as other headphones work fine.

I ordered a few adapters to see if that will fix the issue but other than that I'm not sure what else I can do. Would an amp help? Please redirect me if I posted this in the wrong place. Thanks!

[vanished]

It sounds to me like when you plug them in completely, the channels are fighting each other and cancelling out anything common between them, while leaving anything that exists in mainly one channel or the other.  This lines up with your evidence because vocals are usually panned to the centre and instruments are usually offset.  The Beatles (and other bands of the era when stereo was new) were also notorious for hard panning everything, which  explains why they wouldn't be affected (unless you play the mono versions of course, which come to think of it would be an interesting experiment).

 

What I don't have for you unfortunately is an explanation of how or why this would be happening on your computer.  If a mixer was involved, I could imagine this easily and have seen it before but on a normal PC?  Not so much...

 

However the fact that you say other headphones work fine in the PC tells me the issue must be with the headphones.  Have you tried them on another source?  Hopefully (well, not for you, but for our troubleshooting effort), they will also have the problem there, confirming the issue.  If they don't have an issue on another source then that makes things ugly since at that point we've ruled out both items in the chain.

[Derkoli]

1 hour ago, Jerememe said:

I own a pair of Audio Technica ATH-500x headphones. Ever since I got them, they only work with my computer if the aux cord is plugged in halfway. If I plug it in all the way, I get this really weird effect where I can't hear vocals in most songs, yet I can hear the instrumentals. However, some songs play perfectly fine, like Beatles songs for some reason.

The headphones are also in mono since they aren't plugged in all the way. I've tried cleaning the aux cord, installing and reinstalling drivers, repositioning the cable in every single way and cleaning the female 3.5mm cable. It's not my pc as other headphones work fine.

I ordered a few adapters to see if that will fix the issue but other than that I'm not sure what else I can do. Would an amp help? Please redirect me if I posted this in the wrong place. Thanks!

Are both the male and female jack 3 pole/both 4 pole?