So I had this JBLs, one earphone of which stopped working a couple months ago, and I just left em laying around later to be recycled. Today I tried them again and lo and behold, they work perfectly now. Is there any reason why they do act like that? (FYI I used these extensively while running)
No, it's more that there's a problem with the wires or the solder points. Since you said you messed around with the wires quite a bit without any impact, it could be that the short is in the solder points either in the buds or in the plug.
No, a short is a break in the wire. The wire is made up of multiple strands of copper, like a rope. If you shift the wire around, you can cause them to touch and continue to conduct. If the short isn't very bad, this can be an intermittent issue, as time goes on it will get worse.
Low voltage electronics, like earbuds aren't that dangerous. I was using a drill recently that I knew had a short in it and was just moving it around to make contact so I could finish the job. The cord eventually caught fire and I had to replace it.
My guess, the internal wire likely has an open in the copper somewhere. But since it's wrapped in rubber, the copper wires are still near each other. So it's working right now, but I'd bet if you wiggled the wire it'll cut out again.
Huh. No crackling at all? That is certainly weird. Sometimes electrical things that are acting weird, start just working correctly again. Usually when I see something like that's it's a physical problem not electrical. Think about it like rust in a switch, you move it a bunch, the rust falls off and the switch works again.
So my thought is that you got water, or more likely sweat, onto the actual speaker. Which then hydrolocked the driver. Maybe the water finally dried out and the salts dried, cracked and fell out when you finally tried it again.
That's a total guess and I have no way of proving it.
I had some Jabra Elite some time. One bud got more quiet everytime I used it until it was nearly unhearable. Some forum suggested sticking a toothpick in one specific little hole that might be clogged up with dirt. Didn't believe it, tried it anyway. Low and behold, they worked perfectly again afterwards. Small tech is weird sometimes
Are they active noise cancelling?
I have some jabra noise cancelling ones. When the battery is close to empty it sometimes switches to just one earphone until it completely dies and switches to no noise cancelling mode.