So all of the sudden I have lost audio on the left side of my headphones. These aren’t the ones that the fuze came with. These are the ones that you put on the back of your neck with the felt pads cause I’m a runner and ear buds ■■■■ for that. Strange thing is audio is fine with their headphones. I notice there are 3 bands on the jack of their headphones and 2 on mine. So I go to Radio Shack and buy an adapter for mine, still doesn’t work. What am I missing here?
if other headphones work then the set that does not is likely bad. have you tried them with any other device to see if they still dont work? if not you would need another set of headphones.
When you mention “three bands” versus two, let’s clarify that a bit. There are three types of 1/8" or 3.5mm headphone jacks in popular use:
- Mono headset. Both speakers wired together in parallel. One black band, two silver conductors.
- Stereo headset. Two speakers with the ground shared (common). Two black bands, three silver conductors.
- Stereo / mic for phones. Stereo speakers as above, one more connection for the mike. These have three black bands, and four silver conductors.
Here are the potential problems. With a mono headset , the stereo (individual) channels are shorted together. The Sansa may exhibit a “clipping” sound, as it isn’t good for these two channels to be shorted. With a stereo headset , failures can cause a few different symptoms. Of the common lead breaks (opens), you will be listening to the difference between the two channels, a strange monophonic sound in which vocals seem to be missing. This is because the vocals are often recorded as a monophonic (single microphone) signal, of equal volume, in both channels. If one of the speaker connections fails, you will hear sound in one ear only.
With a stereo headset with microphone , the ground (common) conductor is split to allow one more connection for the microphone. Depending upon the jack used on the portable device, the result can sometimes sound like one missing ear, or the monophonic effect as above.
If you plug in a second stereo headset, and all is normal, this confirms that you simply have a dead headset. Sometimes, if you gently manipulate the wire about one inch from the plug, that missing channel may appear, confirming that the cable has simply frayed internally.
Bob 
thanks for the great responses! I believe now it is the headset. What threw me off was that 2 sets of headphones were not working so I assumed the problem was the sansa. Little logic goes a long way!
