Testing for continuity in headphones

[Acorn Eyes]

I'm unsure how to test for continuity on my earbuds.

I've got a green wire, a red wire, a white wire (copper when I remove the sleeve) with copper wire lining it. 

The green, red, and copper lining were next to each other, not insulated. The white wire has a single thick copper wire inside it's white sleeve with copper threads wrapped around the white wire.

I've tested the wires for continuity by placing + on red and - green. With various combos nothing worked.

Meanwhile I tested the male - male audio jack connector I'm using to replace the broken one. I cut off one end already. 

There's a white, red, and black wire. The white is ground, the black is power, and I assume red is data. 

I tested for it by placing the + lead on one of the wires and the - lead on the audio jack. If there was continuity, I assumed that the respective lead indicated that the wire it's touching is the lead (power or ground).

I'm brand new to multimetering and just want to repair my earbuds.

[Acorn Eyes]

Please?

[mariushm]

There's no power, if they're regular headphones with the classic stereo jack

It's left channel, right channel, ground (shared by both channels)

Each speaker has an impedance measured in ohms so if you put the multimeter on resistance and probes between left channel and ground, or right channel and ground, you should get some resistance (for headphones, typical to have 24-64 ohms)

The wires may look like raw copper but they still may be insulated with a thin enamel coating, which may prevent your probe tips from making contact with the actual wires. This enamel can usually be removed with solder (make a small ball of solder on the tip of your soldering iron and put the enameled wire in the blob of solder, the solder will "eat" the enamel and leave the copper wire covered in a thin layer of solder (tinned).

 

 

 

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

There's no power, if they're regular headphones with the classic stereo jack

It's left channel, right channel, ground (shared by both channels)

Each speaker has an impedance measured in ohms so if you put the multimeter on resistance and probes between left channel and ground, or right channel and ground, you should get some resistance (for headphones, typical to have 24-64 ohms)

The wires may look like raw copper but they still may be insulated with a thin enamel coating, which may prevent your probe tips from making contact with the actual wires. This enamel can usually be removed with solder (make a small ball of solder on the tip of your soldering iron and put the enameled wire in the blob of solder, the solder will "eat" the enamel and leave the copper wire covered in a thin layer of solder (tinned).

 

 

 

This.

One is right channel, one is left, (aka two different + ) and the last one is ground(aka - in this case)

 

If you use the beep thingy, even if the probes actually is hitting the copper, it wont beep, because it is impedance.

[dany_boy]

1 hour ago, Mihle Gaming said:

This.

One is right channel, one is left, (aka two different + ) and the last one is ground(aka - in this case)

 

If you use the beep thingy, even if the probes actually is hitting the copper, it wont beep, because it is impedance.

Yes it will, because the multimeter will measure the purely resistive component of impedance, which should in the range of continuity (less than 200 ohms for most multi's). Multimeters can't really measure impedance, since they have no way of measuring the inductive and capacitive ESR for different frequencies.

[mariushm]

My Uni-T UT61E multimeter stops beeping somewhere around 30 ohm, so don't assume all multimeters beep at less than 200 ohm. 

Also worth mentioning : when measuring small resistances, it's often worth cancelling out the resistance of the leads first.  Use a paper towel or something slightly abrasive to rub the probe tips (to clean them) then put the multimeter on resistance, touch both leads and when the value stabilizes press the REL button to substract the resistance of the probes.

Some cheap leads can have up to 1 ohm resistance in the leads.