So I have a set of Logitech z313 speakers that have served me pretty well. Over the last month or so, they’ve been going in and out. I thought it was a driver issue, but after deleting and reinstalling them about a dozen times, I’m ruling them out. Today, I discovered something odd. From the audio jack on the back of my computer (green 3.5mm jack), the line out goes to the subwoofer. The sub has a separate line that goes out to a male 3.5mm jack, which plugs into a…toggle? that controls the volume and splits the sound out to the desktop speakers.
When I’ve been having issues, I’ve gotten no sound at all*. But when I unplug the line to the toggle, the sub starts to output sound. So the drivers are clearly working. I did discover a small tear in the cable that goes from sub to toggle, but it doesn’t look like there’s any wire breakage there (I could be absolutely mistaken in that).
I’m guessing it’s an issue with that tear, right? Any other possibilities I should check?
*I did crank the volume all the way up to the maximum setting and played the test sounds from the diagnostics check, and heard very faint sound - so something’s coming through.
Obvious answer is not so much a break as a short in the damaged cable. Something has impacted the cable and driven part of the sheath into one or both of the core cables. The short wipes out all function of the entire system, probably by causing the amplifier system to shut down. There will a little one chip wonder class D amplifier inside the sub box, shorting an output probably causes it to go into a safe mode. Fixing the cable is, in principle, trivial, but only if you have a soldering iron and are comfortable using it. Given that that would cost more than an entire new speaker set, you may want to mess about with a more hacked up solution. Depends upon what you feel up to.
A complete replacement is absolutely within the budget - I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t an easy “just tape it up” type solution. And if I’m going to do that, why not hack it up, right?
Cut the damaged wire at the point of damage. Strip back the insulation on both ends, twist the appropriate wires together and use tape to insulate. The worst that can happen is that you need to spend $25. Personally I would be looking at better speakers and regard this as a great opportunity to upgrade.