Hi! New to the forums!

I just got a used 2008 Mazda3i Touring with the 6CD changer. I love it, but I'm having a weird problem with the aux input. When I plug in my iPod (standard minijack to minijack cord from the ipod headphone jack to the console aux in jack), the sound only comes out of the speakers on the left side of the car - nothing comes out of the speakers on the right. However, when I pull the plug slightly out of the aux input jack in the car, it switches and the sound comes out of the right but not left. I get full stereo with the radio or the cd player. The problem isn't the ipod or the cord, because I get full stereo when I use the same equipment (ipod and cord) with my home stereo. It seems like the problem is that the plug and the jack are not compatible. I searched all over the internet, though, and I couldn't find any descriptions of a similar problem. Has anyone else had this problem? Any ideas? Recommendations?

Thanks so much in advance!

 

Hi

Have a look at the jack cable. How many black rings does it have around the metal jack?

Cheers

Wax

 

1 black ring = mono = metal tip, and one metal ring.
2 black rings = stereo = metal tip and two metal rings.

even if it was a mono plug, it should come out of both.

You can try another input device, and a different cable. If a second setup doesn't work, pull out the jack and see if there's any bad connections / connector loose.

 

Yeah, after my op, I did some wikipedia research on trs connectors, as they are officially known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS_connector). My cables are, in fact, mono cables with only one black ring. I have four or five or these cables that I use for different things around the house - I got them all at the same time and they're all the same. After I got over the embarrassment that 1) I didn't know, as a general piece of information, that there were mono and stereo versions of these connectors, 2) I didn't notice that the connectors of these cables looked different than all the various headphones (for example) I've ever owned, and mostly 3) I had never noticed that the sound coming out of any of these cables in any of their other uses was mono, I ordered a bunch of stereo cables from the internet. They should get here soon, and I will reply with the final verdict when they do.

Nevertheless, as mentioned by someone else, the tip of the mono cable should output the left signal that gets picked up from the ipod stereo output to both the left and right channels of the car's input, and this is indeed how it works when I use these cables with other equipment. I guess it doesn't because the car's input is slightly the wrong shape for wonky mono cables. As I mentioned initially, if the cable is fully in sound only comes out of the left, and if it's halfway in sound comes out of the right. Well, there is also a narrow, unstable position in between half and fully in where I get mono sounds from both the left and right.

 

I have had similar problems with a single ring mono jack. I switched to a double ring stereo jack and it worked just fine - don;t ask me why but try this cheap fix and see if it works

Cheers

Wax