Pub quiz PA problems

[elluche]

hope someone can help me, as I am at my wits end... I am a complete novice when it comes to sound systems et al, so hopefully someone can guide me through my problem.

I run a pub quiz in south-east London and as a final round each week play ten songs. To do this, I swap the iPod they have running through an antiquated stereo via the aux jacks for my iPod shuffle. For years it worked fine, but recently I've come into a problem.

In the breaks of the quiz, I play incidental music from the landlord's iPod and all is fine, nice and audible. When it comes to the music round, however, I might get one or two tracks, then it cuts out entirely. If I swap the iPods around again, using the pub one, it works again, but when I put mine back, it fails. For a while I thought there was a problem with the stereo only playing one channel, as the sound was a little garbled and I started editing the tracks on my PC to force 50% of each channel through each channel - my attempt at creating mono..

So, does anyone have any ideas on how to get my iPod to work? I should point out that testing the shuffle on headphones shows all the songs to be working 100% fine. In addition, the volume on the shuffle is not particularly high.

Thanks in advance

Luke

[Tifstorey]

Could be a number of things to be honest... Your best bet (and sounds like you've done most of it) is to try and narrow it down as much as you can.

Have you tried your iPod in a different stereo? Different cable?

When your shuffle stops working, is it just silence? Or is it humming/crackling or throwing out digital distortion?

[elluche]

Hi,

Thanks for the speedy reply...

I've not yet tried it on a different set-up, but shall endeavour to do so when I get the opportunity. As for the cable, that was my next step The 'silence' is total - no interference/humming/distortion that I can hear at all.

Regards

Luke

[Tifstorey]

So, the shuffle works fine if you have headphones plugged in, but as soon as you change the lead to the main speakers it just doesn't have any output whereas the other iPod does?

Sounds pretty weird.. What cable are you using?

I know it's not solving the problem, but can you not do the pub quiz on the pubs iPod?