I am trying to connect together 2 1W speakers and mount them inside some ear defenders. I am a complete novice and am following an instructable tutorial. The tutorial is a bit light on the basics and I have been unable to find any answers to my questions online. Here is a picture of the materials I am using…
3.5mm headphone jack socket, 2 1W speakers, audio wire, ear defenders.
Here is a close up of the speaker…
Question1: Points A and B are copper and points 1 and 2 are something else. So my first question is do I solder the audio wire to A and B or 1 and 2 or doesn't it matter?
Here is a close up of the headphone socket and wire ends…
Question 2: Do I poke the wires through the holes and solder there? Is it white wire on one and red on the other?
Question 3: Do the red and white wires have any significance?
Here is a link to the instructable tutorial I am using.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Ear-Defender-Headphones/
I am happy with the circuit that needs to be created just not sure where to connect everything. I tried holding wires against the contacts on the speaker and on the headphone socket with sound plugged into the socket and nothing happened with the speakers. Sorry for the long question but I am completely lost. Any guidance at all would be greatly appreciated.
Best Answer
Points 1 & 2 are the soldering points for the speaker voice coil. Do not solder connecting wires on 1 & 2 as the voice coil wires may get disturbed and cause damage to the speaker.
Points A & B are the copper pads where the wires are to be soldered.
Soldering slender wires will avoid overheating and damage to the speaker.
The wires are to be held in the headphone jack lug holes and soldered.
Wire colours are only to identify 'left channel', 'right channel' and 'common'.
Wire as shown below.
Since you are using 8Ω 1W speakers, take care to ensure that the headphones are not plugged into a high power amplifier output which may cause hearing damage.
A power input of 10mW to the headphones may be adequate for comfortable listening. Standard headphone impedances are 32Ω and 300Ω.