So it's never been categorically acknowledged or resolved to my knowledge, but many users have been reporting that going by the frequent failure of earphones it could be that the N900 is blasting DC down the line to phones.

I usually listen to music on my iPhone as it works better in every respect (and indeed, in most other respects as well, except for the GSM radio - which is still sucktacular) in terms of audio, but the increasing usability of things like aenbacka's QSpot, etc in the audio area is making me take another look at the N900 which I still have - mainly because if I sold it now, it'd fetch less than an early iPhone 3G - so I'm getting my money's worth out of it before finally ditching it, dammit.

The problem is that I'm not a user of your $50, $100 or even $500 pieces of ear gear. In conjunction with the stereo random reversal problem, a DC blast + expensive ear/headphones = not a great prospect.

Looking through the litany of audio issues I'm leery in any case, but I really would like to subject the N900 to more use than a second-string phone / email client.

Questions:
- Is/was this an actual issue
- If so, is it fixed?

Thanks

What do you mean by "blasting DC down the line"?

i imagine he means sending a surge of direct current electricity through the headphones and frying them.

I imagine that, but I've certainly not heard anything about it. Especially not here, where every minor issue is a disaster worthy of multiple pages of posts

You have me concerned now, will attach my N900 to a scope tmrw.

no i havent seen a single one of our resident scaremongers complaining about this, however i am quite excited about the prospect of refining this "fault" and turning my n900 into a taser!

I was hoping someone would have concrete evidence one way or another - there are a number of 'earphones failed multiple times' posts on the board, with some of them being attributed to a possible DC leakage.

This is one of the later examples: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=57

Nope, not heard of this nor had any experience with it, and i force my n900 tripple rca to be used as a 3.5mm to dual audio rca out lol, that sends feedback back and forth, still no issues :')

This issue looks more like people playing with the output values and pushing them too high, i've had this happen once to my headphones on a mac (and it blew the left/right channels) but dont think n900 has the potential to do this!

Could be wrong! more worried about your iphone doing it then anything else, the apple experience eh.

I don't know about the N900 per se, but my PC's Audigy 2 card's breakout box lets out a "blast" of DC(resulting in a "click" noise) on the headphone port whenever it's powered on, or whenever the headphone cable is plugged in. Often it can be quite loud, too, depending on the hardware volume control POT.
Despite this, I haven't had any trouble with my Sennheiser HD 280PRO's, and have been using them for many months.

Most all audio devices will cause some sort of click as they are plugged in; I'd just make sure that I could replace your headphones if they ever fail and ignore it - Remember, headphones can fail from being dropped too often, or having the cord die...

Yeah - I need to know about the N900 per se until I'd be OK using it. Signs of multiple earphone failures being reported occasionally are usually head/earphone-fatal DC leaks happening in certain situations.

It's not quite that I'd 'make sure that you could replace them' - of course I can - but obviously at $1100 for my portable earphones and $1700 for my portable headphones I'd rather they didn't get fried every few months.