So I decided to hack my Sony Walkman Swim Headphones – an imperfect but adequate
solution to a volume problem.
This past Christmas,
I received an MP3 player which can be worn while swimming. I was
excited but afraid some of the more negative reviews I'd read might
be true. That being that they've not been perfected yet and water can baffle the
sound.
Mine was a Sony
Walkman NWZW273 4-gigabyte MP3 player which is submersible. I won't get into the features
outside of those for swimming except to say that the unit is like the
iPod Shuffle in that it is a very small. Instead of one piece with wired headphones, my was a two-piece
wireless MP3 player with ear-buds connected directly to the two
player parts.The unit is light
and I barely notice it on my head when I'm swimming.
As part of the
water-resistance feature, the package includes two types of
ear-buds--those that are designed for swimming and those which can be
used for either swimming or not. The two are basically the same
except that the swimming ear-buds have a second filter to
prevent water getting into them (a first filter exists on the end of
the plastic tubing that runs into the player and to which the
ear-buds attach).
While it was a good
idea, I found this second filter feature to be a big problem for me
in that they muffled the sound such that the volume was insufficient
and nearly inaudible when combined with the splashing sound of my freestyle
stroke. The standard ear-buds (no filter) provided much better volume
transmission but allowed water to get in (even after experimenting with various sized ear-buds Sony provides), baffling the sound
equivalently or worse when that happened. Ergo, I had a problem.
Realizing this
baffled sound might make the unit unusable for my purposes
(swimming), I googled this issue and found some other swimmers using
the unit had similar complaints. Some advised switching to a
different MP3 product which offers jaw-bone (skull) sound
conductivity, but those suckers cost over a $100, are bulkier and,
to my eye, resemble scuba equipment!
Instead, I decided
I'd try to hack the unit by finding a better pair of ear-buds to replace those that came with the unit. Spinning through
the myriad listings of ear-buds available through Amazon.com, I found some water-proof
ear-buds for $4, that apparently came from China. This was a
reasonable financial risk, I told my cheap self who really wanted
this Sony player to do what it was supposed to but didn't want to spend much to fix it.
Upon arrival, the
new earphones resembled standard earphones with larger than usual
ear-buds designed like a pair of mason screws, each with three increasingly
wide rings whose purpose apparently was to offer both universal
sizing and to prevent water penetration into the ears. Removing the
rubber ear-bud components from the wires I noted they had no water
filter at all.
Well my idea worked.
Swapping out the Sony soft rubber ear-buds for the harder rubber
Chinese ear-buds jumped the volume up considerably. Bottom line, they successfully
keep the water out of my ears for the most part*. The sound is even
louder, when I put my ears (even my entire head) below the water surface.
I am now a happy rocking swimmer!
* Water still gets
in occasionally and a good shake of the head or ear-bud usually
removes it. I've found that if this does not improve the volume,
water has most likely gotten into the plastic tubing past the first
(permanent) filter. When this happens, I've successfully repaired
this by removing the ear-buds and placing the tubing a few inches from a halogen desk lamp for
a few minutes which has draws the water out of the inside of the tubing. Pressing a soft cotton cloth
over the filter may also draw the water out (this solution eliminates the need of a trip home
before using the player again).
* * * *
My blog has problems posting replies to reader-comments so my answer(s) is/are included below ...
The following is the link to the headphones I bought. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F408EYK ... remember, upon receipt of these new headphones, I simply swapped out the old earbuds with this product's new earbuds.
* * * *
My blog has problems posting replies to reader-comments so my answer(s) is/are included below ...
The following is the link to the headphones I bought. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F408EYK ... remember, upon receipt of these new headphones, I simply swapped out the old earbuds with this product's new earbuds.
