My laptop has the audio jack right next to a USB port, and it has happened that sometimes if I try to plug it in without looking, I’ve jammed it into the USB port instead, underneath the pins. Usually, I realize my mistake upon having a bzzzt bzzzt buzzing or electrical sound coming from my earphones. My question is, why? I mean clearly, electricity is running through it but how come it gets translated into that buzzing sound by the speakers
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Because all a speaker is is a little rubber membrane with a magnet on it that vibrates *in response to any electrical signal*. When you plug your headphones into the headphone hole, the computer can send the right electrical wiggles down the wire so that when the speaker membrane wiggles the same way, it wiggles the air in a way that sounds like what you’re asking it to play.
But ANY electrical signal down the wire will make the speaker wiggle the air in a pattern that matches the electricity in the wire. So when you touch the microphone cable into a USB port, which also outputs an electric signal, the wire carries those electric wiggles down to the speaker, which wiggles the air in the shape of whatever random data/signal is coming from your USB port. Not surprisingly, that’s going to sound like random electrical buzzing.
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