question about an old headphone trick
 

I had forgotten about a trick I discovered like 10 years ago until recently.. if you have a portable cd player (though I'm sure any stereo with a headphone jack would work), and you put the headphone plugin out in the headphone hole most of the way -- not all the way -- and push down upon it, you hear a weird version of songs, I've been able to hear instrumental versions of songs this way. It gives the same effect as some kind of central channel extractor. I just discovered this by accident, and I've never been able to find any other information out about it, I'm sure it's old news and everyone who's listened to lots of music has done it, either on purpose or by accident, at some point. Can anyone give me some information on this?

wow, that was fast, and EXACTLY what i was talking about -- thank you!

yeah, I'm cool as shit in a fridge.

a less funny "explanation":

"Sometimes, when the plug or cable is broken (and it could happen when the plug is half plugged) the headphones loses the "common" or "earth" contact, so, the circuit completes through the "live" wires of both channels. the effect is that the sounds that have the same phase in both channels is canceled and only remain what's different (stereo FX mostly: reverbs, delays, chorus, etc.)"

found on some forum, thanks to the original poster.

insane!

This is the technique that can be used to sing in a studio without headphones on. You put the speakers and microphone out of phase with each other.

I usually put headphones out of phase anyway... that way if the phones leak into the microphone it won't show up in the mix.

yeah, this is what happens when you drop your player and try to catch it by the headphones cable, it sounds like shit, if shit was high treble no bass

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