Electrical – Does the electrical impedance of a headphone depend more on the cable or on the headphone itself

audioheadphonesimpedanceresistancesoldering

I'm currently considering buying a defect headphone with a built-in broken cable which would be quite expensive otherwise. I'm quite sure I'm able to solder a new cable onto the headphone to fix it.

My question is the following:
Does the impedance of a headphone noticeably change if I use a cheap standard AUX-chord or does it mainly depend on the internal electronics of the headphone?

Best Answer

A standard set of headphones has no electronics. The sound is produced by miniature electro-magnetic loudspeakers.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

The impedance of the speakers is typically >= 8 Ω and the wiring would be less than one tenth of that for good control of the speakers.

Be careful to get the phasing of the speakers right. If you swap them the sound will be out of phase and will give a weird hole-in-the-middle-of-your-head effect.