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How Do Headphone Cables Carry Audio?

2022-11-14

How Do Headphone Cables Carry Audio?

So far, we know that headphones are transducers. To convert energy, their drivers must be part of an electrical circuit that has an analog audio signal (AC voltage) passing through it.

This AC voltage is typically carried from the connected audio device through the headphone cable to the driver.

That being said, wireless headphones are becoming more and more common (more on wireless headphones here).

But for this article, we're focusing on how audio passes from the device through the headphone jack and headphone cable to the drivers.

The Headphone Jack

Audio signals sent from a device to a pair of headphones nearly always pass through a headphone jack.

Remember how a drive requires at least two lead wires to function properly? Headphone jacks effectively prepare the audio signal into its separate components on different conductors (often called poles).

Headphone jacks also very often have digital-to-analog converters (DACs) in close proximity to their designs. Headphones are inherently analog, but many of our audio devices are digital (smartphones, digital consoles, laptops, audio interfaces, tablets, etc.).

A quality DAC will convert digital audio from the device into analog audio for the jack to pass on to the cable, which connects to the headphone driver.

Note that if the headphones are designed as a headset (they include a microphone), the DAC can effectively convert the analog signal from the microphone into digital audio for the digital device to process.

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