Headphone detected as speakers and not detected by Realtek

[Black Jake]

Hello everyone, hope you guys are doing well. So it's my very post on a forum hope i'm in the right place. 
My uncle got me a headphone yesterday (He never used it, I know it was made years ago but it's new). It's SteelSeries Diablo III Black/Red Headset (Original model SteelSeries Siberia v2 I guess). So my problem is, when I plug my headset on, first of all it's detected as Speakers, which is not a good sign because somehow the headset is like Mono (Both earbuds gives sound from one channel I guess ? When I try to test left and right sides they both sound the same), plus the sound is a bit disoriented (Hearing music without lyrics and the volume is low) unless I change the balance ! When I put R to 100 and L to 0 or vice-versa the sound is perfect from both sides ! but the bad thing is when I play games (more precisely FPS games) I can't hear the effects and what's going on the side that i put on 0 so, nothing's fixed yet. I tried to uninstall the drivers and reinstall them, I installed the latest Realtek driver (still not detecting my Headset). Tried enhancements checked if it's stereo or mono, tried to use Dorby & APO Equalizer, tried to download steelseries engine yes he detect the headset but no useful options there, etc... Nothing worked. I'm thinking of getting an USB Audio Adapter I don't know if this exists. There are other people that experienced this issue in different forums but I guess no specific solution was found. If you guys have any suggestions please be free to tell me, I can link other forums with the problem as I have if my explanation is bad, sorry ! 

Have a great day.

[Tigerleon]

1 hour ago, Black Jake said:

Hello everyone, hope you guys are doing well. So it's my very post on a forum hope i'm in the right place. 
My uncle got me a headphone yesterday (He never used it, I know it was made years ago but it's new). It's SteelSeries Diablo III Black/Red Headset (Original model SteelSeries Siberia v2 I guess). So my problem is, when I plug my headset on, first of all it's detected as Speakers, which is not a good sign because somehow the headset is like Mono (Both earbuds gives sound from one channel I guess ? When I try to test left and right sides they both sound the same), plus the sound is a bit disoriented (Hearing music without lyrics and the volume is low) unless I change the balance ! When I put R to 100 and L to 0 or vice-versa the sound is perfect from both sides ! but the bad thing is when I play games (more precisely FPS games) I can't hear the effects and what's going on the side that i put on 0 so, nothing's fixed yet. I tried to uninstall the drivers and reinstall them, I installed the latest Realtek driver (still not detecting my Headset). Tried enhancements checked if it's stereo or mono, tried to use Dorby & APO Equalizer, tried to download steelseries engine yes he detect the headset but no useful options there, etc... Nothing worked. I'm thinking of getting an USB Audio Adapter I don't know if this exists. There are other people that experienced this issue in different forums but I guess no specific solution was found. If you guys have any suggestions please be free to tell me, I can link other forums with the problem as I have if my explanation is bad, sorry ! 

Have a great day.

This is just how it looks. There is no problem with them. Altough if you are only using a 3.5 mm to your front port it should use realtek drivers. There could be a thing inside of the headset. I am not sure though

[an actual squirrel]

This is likely a wiring problem.

[Black Jake]

I don't know much about it, I was hoping I can get something like this hoping it will be detected as a headset instead of speakers, I'm open for suggestions anyways. 

And thanks for replying guys, appreciate it. 

[JZStudios]

If you aren't getting lyrics I would think it's supposed to be a "surround" headset but it's not working properly. Though the left and right should still have lyrics. Having it detected as "speakers" isn't a problem. My Realtek driver defaults to calling the rear 3.5 speakers. You can rename it if you want. If you click on configure you should set it to stereo and when you test them it should play out of each ear individually.

 

I can't tell what kind of input jack it has, is it a 3.5

[The Flying Sloth]

As has been previously stated, there's a wiring issue if you aren't hearing vocals. It's a phenomena known as phase cancellation and is often down to a poor audio jack connection, wiggle that around for a bit or try it in other devices to see if it's fixed, if not, you have yourself a defective unit.

[an actual squirrel]

Yea, each speaker in the headset has a hot and a ground cable. Somehow, the hot of one speaker got connected to the ground of the other speaker. This results in destructive interference when the same sound is played on both channels. Which would explain the missing sounds.

 

Anyway, if it isn't just a loose connection, this isn't going to be an easy fix. It will involve desoldering and resoldering cables.

[Black Jake]

Oh okay, I understand better now. But is it normal that when I change balance to 80 100 for example I hear the lyrics pretty well ? (The more the difference between L and R the better I hear the music, when I put it at R 100 L 0 or R 0 L 100 the sound is perfect ! the vocals and everything, but even when putting them like that I can hear from both sides, the only problem is in video games ).  

Thanks for the help ! 

[Black Jake]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

If you aren't getting lyrics I would think it's supposed to be a "surround" headset but it's not working properly. Though the left and right should still have lyrics. Having it detected as "speakers" isn't a problem. My Realtek driver defaults to calling the rear 3.5 speakers. You can rename it if you want. If you click on configure you should set it to stereo and when you test them it should play out of each ear individually.

 

I can't tell what kind of input jack it has, is it a 3.5

I can't change it from Stereo anyways, that's the only choice I have. 
And yes it's a 3.5 I guess

[The Flying Sloth]

56 minutes ago, Black Jake said:

Oh okay, I understand better now. But is it normal that when I change balance to 80 100 for example I hear the lyrics pretty well ? (The more the difference between L and R the better I hear the music, when I put it at R 100 L 0 or R 0 L 100 the sound is perfect ! the vocals and everything, but even when putting them like that I can hear from both sides, the only problem is in video games ).  

Thanks for the help ! 

Phase cancellation is when the waveform of the audio is cancelled out by the opposite audio waveform, so, if your left and right sides are both playing the same audio (vocal tracks are almost always panned center in audio) and the phase is inverted on one side (creating the opposite waveform) the vocals from each side cancel one another out. If you pan further to one side or the other the two sides no longer have identical waveforms as one is louder than the other, because of this the vocal is no longer perfectly cancelled and it comes back.
Hope that helped.

[an actual squirrel]

Again, I think this is ultimately likely caused by one side having been mistakenly wired in reverse, so the solution would be to figure out which side that is and rewire it the other way. Another possibility is that connections that were meant to be kept separate on the other end were mistakenly bridged together by sloppy soldering. In either case, you will have to rewire the headphones.

[JZStudios]

7 hours ago, The Flying Sloth said:

As has been previously stated, there's a wiring issue if you aren't hearing vocals. It's a phenomena known as phase cancellation and is often down to a poor audio jack connection, wiggle that around for a bit or try it in other devices to see if it's fixed, if not, you have yourself a defective unit.

Would that happen in headphones though? Each ear is still getting it's own signal, and given the speaker wires inside the headphone should just be two wires I don't know what else it could be. I've never tried listening with just one earphone out of phase.

 

6 hours ago, Black Jake said:

Oh okay, I understand better now. But is it normal that when I change balance to 80 100 for example I hear the lyrics pretty well ? (The more the difference between L and R the better I hear the music, when I put it at R 100 L 0 or R 0 L 100 the sound is perfect ! the vocals and everything, but even when putting them like that I can hear from both sides, the only problem is in video games ).  

Thanks for the help ! 

If it is a phase issue, (and it could still be your brain playing tricks) then yes, it's normal. If you cut out one signal side you won't have the phase cancellation. The simplest way to explain it is that sound is in waves, like a sine wave. Typically, they're in sync, like the left side, and the output adds together. Say the height is +1 and the valley is -1. Add the two together. Normally it's 1+1, so you get 2.

When the phase of one is inverted, like on the right, then it still adds those, but now it's -1 +1, so it cancels out to zero. This is what noise cancelling headphones do.

If you just take the left or right individually, then there's no phase cancellation happening since it's not adding the opposing channels together.

4 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

Again, I think this is ultimately likely caused by one side having been mistakenly wired in reverse, so the solution would be to figure out which side that is and rewire it the other way. Another possibility is that connections that were meant to be kept separate on the other end were mistakenly bridged together by sloppy soldering. In either case, you will have to rewire the headphones.

I think if it was bridged it would've killed the speaker. He should be able to swap the wires on either earcup.

[The Flying Sloth]

3 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Would that happen in headphones though? Each ear is still getting it's own signal, and given the speaker wires inside the headphone should just be two wires I don't know what else it could be. I've never tried listening with just one earphone out of phase.

Not phase cancellation between the speakers, phase cancellation between the electrical connections, there's a short that's cancelling. Of course headphones can't phase cancel between the drivers.

[JZStudios]

7 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

Not phase cancellation between the speakers, phase cancellation between the electrical connections, there's a short that's cancelling. Of course headphones can't phase cancel between the drivers.

Eh, could be. I suppose most headsets are just straight wires from one earpiece to the other. Or... are they? They're stereo, so it should have separate wires... I don't know. I'm not much of an electronics/wiring guy, I just follow whatever guides are already in place.

[The Flying Sloth]

7 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Eh, could be. I suppose most headsets are just straight wires from one earpiece to the other. Or... are they? They're stereo, so it should have separate wires... I don't know. I'm not much of an electronics/wiring guy, I just follow whatever guides are already in place.

Sure they have separate wiring, but a short in the cable coming from the device is quite common, especially if it's not been handled carefully, the insulation deteriorates over time.

[Black Jake]

Whoa that's a lot to take on, thank you so much for all of this guys. I don't know if I'll be able to do something about it, since the headset is in perfect shape I'll most likely just ruin it if I try to open it to fix it. So If I may ask, what would you guys do in this situation. 

Thanks again ! 

[an actual squirrel]

If there is someone in your family that is an electrical engineer or into electronics, they can probably fix the wiring for you. To be frank, short of that, for gaming purposes, you will have to buy new headphones to have a good experience.

 

For music and videos and video conferencing, you can combine left and right into a single channel, and output that single channel to just one side, and because of your situation, you will get dual mono. This can be done in equalizerapo.

[JZStudios]

I'd just see if I could take it apart and swap the wires. But if you don't have a soldering iron that's out of the picture. Otherwise, it's just deal with it or get a different headset.

[The Flying Sloth]

3 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I'd just see if I could take it apart and swap the wires. But if you don't have a soldering iron that's out of the picture. Otherwise, it's just deal with it or get a different headset.

He would need to replace the whole cable, 

[an actual squirrel]

I was mistaken earlier when I said this could be caused by a speaker wired in reverse. But it can be caused by sloppy soldering of the cables on the other end, or as sloth is saying, the cables shorting from the insulation deteriorating. 

[ShearMe]

Sanity check: are we sure the jack is plugged ALLLLLLL THE WAY into the headphone port?

[The Flying Sloth]

34 minutes ago, ShearMe said:

Sanity check: are we sure the jack is plugged ALLLLLLL THE WAY into the headphone port?

It's a USB headset.

[JZStudios]

1 hour ago, The Flying Sloth said:

It's a USB headset.

He said it was 3.5?

[The Flying Sloth]

13 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

He said it was 3.5?

I don't know if he said that but the Diablo is a USB headset.

[Black Jake]

9 hours ago, JZStudios said:

He said it was 3.5?

No no my bad, when I said 3.5 I was talking about the adapter that I suggested earlier, my headset is USB.