Zen Micro - Headphone Jack problem??

[CHINABOY1021]

ive had my zen for about 4-5 monthes and i think it's got the infamous headphone jack problem.

sometimes, the sound gets crunchy as if there is a bad connection. headphone jack problem or just my E2Cs crapping out??

 

[scorpian007]

Probably headphone jack. Try another pair of headphones to be sure.

If its faulty, RMA the player and you should get a replacement.

 

[dynamius]

it's almost always certain that the headphone contacts connection on the circuit board are coming apart due to poor manufacturing soldering.

not wanting to deal with the warranty crap, i just cracked mine open and resoldered the headphone connections onto the circuit board myself... feels and sounds like new again

i wouldn't recommend it unless you knew what you were doing tho...

 

[squirt]

something i recently discovered about my ZM plastic carry case is it doesn't always allow enough clearence for the headphone jack plug without having to force it to fit, depending on the plug. i used my dremel tool to grind away a small circular area of the case so that any headphone jack will have enough room to plug in without comming into contact against the case edge which it stands to reason would reduce the stress on the plug and the solder points.

Here you can see the plug (Grado 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch adaptor) and it's evident the top edge of the plug did not have quite enough room to plug in without contact with the upper edge of the case but since the contact area is now ground away no more undue stress is put on the jack. i don't know if this problem has any relation to the ZM's headphone jack failures but i think it's a good idea to make more room for the plug anyway just in case.

 

[callanish]

As a long time user of Creative products, there has been an issue that goes back to the Zen NX and continued on to various other creative products where there is a corrupt buffer which happens randomly with music files causing static sounding playback. I Read on some other forums that the micro could also be affected. This issue isn't related to the headphone jack problem, and a lot of people have automatically blamed that, but it turned out to be some kind of hardware flaw somewhere in the unit as no software firmware updates on any of the zen players have solved the issue. I don't know if this could be your problem, but thought I should just throw this out there as another possible cause to what the problem might be.