I use headphones on a desktop PC to listen to music. For some reason, every day, the cable is twisted, so that there's a sort of knot in it, like this:

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And then I untwist it by holding the cable up so the headphones start rotating until the cable is untwisted. But the next day it's twisted again. AFAIK, I'm not rotating the headphones, at least not consciously, so where do these twists come from? Does anyone else recognize this little annoyance?

sorry, my bad. I herd u liek twisty bread, so I put a twist in ur headphones, dawg.

If your computer has a fork in it, pieces of the fork can break off and travel through the cord, with the ferromagnetic metal causing magnetic torsion.

Do you take it off often?
The cable of my headphone is always twisted too, because I take on/take off very often, and I guess always with the same movement, that puts a twist in it.

PERHAPS YOU SHOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT AND GET BACK TO WORK!


I expect your TPS reports on my desk by the end of the day.

I had that problem once.

It turned out that my pet Wookie had been playing with it. I had it shot and all was well from then on.

There's a maths paper floating around somewhere which looks at cables/strings from a knot theory point of view and shows that they're in some way prone to becoming tangled up.

I find I get the same thing when I wrap the cables around something (like my mp3 player). Are you doing something similar?

there is probably a partial short in one of the circuits assuming there there is two separate circuits for headphones. The resulting magnetism giving off of by the adjacent circuit area next to the short would cause it to bend and twist.

Or you wrap your cord a lot... and it has developed kink-itis.

Maybe if the wires inside the cable are twisted (a la twisted pair) they tend to impart a twist to the entire cable. Basic physics, like air plane propellers making it harder to bank in one direction than in the other.

This is why telephone handset cords (remember those?) were pigtailed. Of course, they still twist and get tangled if you have teenage daughters. Get them mobile phones, it will solve that problem.

Now, how about that strangulation problem when you forget you're wearing headphones and you walk away from your desk?