[IanC]

Research came up empty about this problem, so hopefully someone in the community can share some insight.
 
TL;DR: Beyerdynamic DT 1350 left side driver suddenly goes completely dead on Clip+; sound restored by plugging into laptop headphone jack (whole process repeated several times) - why does this happen, should I exchange the phones?
 
Details:
Today when listening to my new (3 days ownership) DT1350s, I experienced an odd problem. Specifically, I was plugged into a Sansa Clip+ and suddenly, the left side driver went completely silent; I moved the jack and lightly moved cables to see if there was any static, but it was dead silent. Next, I removed and reinserted the plug and restarted the player, and the driver remained silent. Now the odd part: in order to check if the source was the problem, I plugged into my laptop (Thinkpad T410) headphone jack and heard a "click" on the previously dead left side driver and surprisingly, the sound was completely restored. I plugged back into the Clip+ and the phones worked normally, but then the sound died again on the left side (three times and counting). Each time I plugged the headphones into the laptop jack, the sound has been restored.
 
What I don't understand is why the sound is restored by plugging into the laptop; my experience has been that when a side goes silent, it stays silent or produces static (when jostling the cables) from a bad solder or connection. It seems like something out of science fiction, as if the driver gets "demagnetized" and then "remagnetized".
 
Has anyone else had this problem or know if it's a defect with the headphones? Thanks.

 

[SDBiotek]

I suspect the jack on the Clip+ is at fault. When a jack is going bad, sometimes unplugging and reinserting will temporarily fix the connection. Since the headphone works fine with other sources, it is not an issue.

 

[IanC]

When the driver went silent on the Clip+, I tried unplugging and reinserting the phones several times (in the Clip) without any audible clicks or static; what's mysterious to me is that when I plug the phones into the laptop, there is a "click" and the dead side comes back to life. Furthermore, when I plugged the phones back into the Clip+, there was sound in both sides, which seems to eliminate the jack as the source of the problem. It appears that the driver goes completely dead on the Clip+, and for some reason the laptop jack restarts it, which makes no sense to me.