This week I decided to take apart some broken Beats headphones that my sister had to see if I could potentially bring it back to life. Unfortunately, I was not able to do so, but I was able to learn a bit about the way headphones work and how the interior is designed overall. As usual, I attempted to do it myself at first just to see if I could figure anything out before needing help from the internet, but that did not end up being the case. When I looked up a video on Youtube, I found someone taking apart the headphones by prying off the sides. I deiced to give that a shot and kept attempting to pry off the headphones for several minutes before I stopped and realized that the video I was looking at had wireless headphones instead of wired, which I didn’t really think mattered, but I decided to find a video of wired ones instead just in case. That ended up helping because in the video I watched, the guy ended up taking the headphones apart through the speakers. I pried off the speaker muffs and beneath were a set of screws I eventually unscrewed to find a single wire soldered onto some green metal piece.

I expected there to be a lot more wires there because I figured for headphones to do their job properly, they would need several more pieces working together to provide us with sound and mics and all the features that many headphones have. As surprised as I was to find a single wire, I was also somewhat relieved because I worried it might have been much more tedious to move around all those wires to get to the areas I need in order to disassemble the headphones. Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with that, but I did have to deal with a rubber piece that had several points made to securely fit into the plastic piece the wire was glued to.

I hadn’t seen any way of getting beneath the plastic piece with the wire, so I had to consult the video for help, and I am glad I did because I would have never figured out that I needed to take off this rubber, or how. When I finally got it off, there was another case I had to unscrew and then I was finally able to see the wire beneath the headphones. I was again surprised because I thought that at its very core at least there would be more wires, but it was really only that one wire again. Even when I opened up the other side of the headphones, it was the same situation. I did, however, find what looked to be a motherboard right on the inner side of the headphone.

I was still somewhat surprised by the lack of wires, but I was glad to find the source of the wire’s function. I supposed I figured there would be more wires or more complex pieces because for a device that does so much and costs so much, there should be a lot more components making it work the way it does. I am not trying to undermine the work of the motherboard because I’m sure it is programmed to do its job very efficiently, but I was still intrigued by how little was required.