External speaker

I decided I could use a little more volume while driving so I went to Wally-World and bought a 3.5 inch speaker with a nice heavy magnet. I took an old cord from a set of ear-buds,hooked them up to the speaker,plugged into the earphone jack and----nothing.I know Uniden and RS sell external speakers that presumeably work so why doesn't mine.I suspect the "nice heavy magnet " might be part of the problem.What do you think? Oh yeah,it's a B95XLT

Hmmm interesting. Did you try to hook up a standard set of headphones to your scanner to make sure the headphone jack works?

Yes,the head phone jack works just fine

It don't work dat way!

External speaker

I decided I could use a little more volume while driving so I went to Wally-World and bought a 3.5 inch speaker with a nice heavy magnet. I took an old cord from a set of ear-buds,hooked them up to the speaker,plugged into the earphone jack and----nothing.I know Uniden and RS sell external speakers that presumeably work so why doesn't mine.I suspect the "nice heavy magnet " might be part of the problem.What do you think? Oh yeah,it's a B95XLT


Hmmm interesting. Did you try to hook up a standard set of headphones to your scanner to make sure the headphone jack works?
__________________
~Chad~

glide said:

Yes,the head phone jack works just fine

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Well sir, ur problem is due to the fact that the earphone output is a high impedance/low signal level source. Most likely the output is about .2 volts at around 10 or 15K ohms. It ain’t gona drive a fat honkin 8 ohm speaker designed for 5 watts of audio from a radio! Try pluggin dat sucker in the external speaker output of the radio instead.

I'm uncertain however, if you are using the earphone jack, or the headphone jack from the above post. Some "headpones outputs" CAN drive speakers, but earphone output can't.

Earphones are high impedance low signal level devices that work great when stuck in the earphone jack. Don’t try stick’in them in the external speaker or headphone jacks or you’ll get a unpleasant surprise!:twisted:

N1508J said:

Earphones are high impedance low signal level devices that work great when stuck in the earphone jack. Don’t try stick’in them in the external speaker or headphone jacks or you’ll get a unpleasant surprise!:twisted:

Click to expand...

Huh? Are you saying that you cannot plug earphones into the headphone jack of a scanner? Whats the difference between headphones and earphones? Also, as far as I know, I sure could be wrong, but the BC95XLT does not have an external speaker output. Its a handheld, so I believe it only has the headphone jack. If thats the case I guess he's SOL as far as the speaker he purchased, I guess he'll have to buy a speaker made for scanners / CB's.

My Guess

I'll bet the plug on the earbud is a stereo plug and you should be using a mono plug. Two rings on the plug should be hot (one left, one right) and the third ring would be common to the two remaining wires (ground). Do you have any type of meter where you can test continuity through the plug ?

I was thinking the same thing, but when I plug a stereo plug into my scanner it works, although I only hear traffic on one side of the headphones. Maybe he used the 'side' that doesnt work....?

AHHH, new info!

Bentley said:

Huh? Are you saying that you cannot plug earphones into the headphone jack of a scanner? Whats the difference between headphones and earphones? Also, as far as I know, I sure could be wrong, but the BC95XLT does not have an external speaker output. Its a handheld, so I believe it only has the headphone jack. If thats the case I guess he's SOL as far as the speaker he purchased, I guess he'll have to buy a speaker made for scanners / CB's.

Click to expand...

Since I now know it's a handheld, 4 get some of my last! Base/mobile units can be configured differently cuz they have more audio power to work with since a storage battery is available to power a more robust audio output circuit of 3 to 5 watts. Handhelds are lucky to have a 1.5 watts of audio if that!

Now, some actual earphones are high impedance...10K or higher. Headphones generally are considered lower impedance in nature...as low as 4 and up to 32 ohms are common. Point is, the BC95XLT (which I know nothing about, in which case I should STFU):twisted: has a output jack for audio. Since it does, the operating manual SHOULD indicate if a 8 ohm or higher headset or speaker is suggested. When the proper device is plugged in and nothing is heard, then either the device, jack or plug becomes suspect.

One other note. The size of a speaker magnet will not the loudness make. However, if you have a "thing" that produces "X" watts of audio, the size of the magnet on the speaker will be fairly proportional. So if your audio amp produces 10 watts of audio, changing your 2 oz. speaker magnet to a speaker with a 4 oz. magnet won't give you 20 watts of audio! But it MAY help the speakers voice coil jess a wee bit:wink:

glide said:

I decided I could use a little more volume while driving so I went to Wally-World and bought a 3.5 inch speaker with a nice heavy magnet. I took an old cord from a set of ear-buds,hooked them up to the speaker,plugged into the earphone jack and----nothing.I know Uniden and RS sell external speakers that presumeably work so why doesn't mine.I suspect the "nice heavy magnet " might be part of the problem.What do you think? Oh yeah,it's a B95XLT

Click to expand...

Try using a stereo to mono adapter. But, if it has that big of a magnet, without a doubt, the ht does not have enough audio output to drive the speaker. Try getting an amplified speaker from somewhere. It will make your mobile listening more enjoyable.
Larry

Just to add to the problem, almost all headphone/earphone jacks of handheld scanners are attenuated so that you don't damage your hearing (aren't lawyers wonderful?) so unamplified speakers plugged into such jacks generally do very poorly.

External speaker again

OK I found out that I was hooking it up wrong.The old ear bud cable I was using has a white wire ,a red wire and an uninsulated wire. Hooking the white and red to the speaker was my mistake.I should have used either the red or the white and the uninsulated one to make it work. Now it works but the built-in speaker is much louder so I guess I'll have to be content with that.Thanks for your replies.

Earphone jacks usually do not have enough punch to really drive a regular speaker.