Very strange speaker problem

[claytontpollard]

Hello all, I am excited about finding this website. I have been bending toys for a few years and have ran into a strange problem. I bent a childrens draw and play toy that has a touch 'instrument' interface panel (a) with accompanying music and sounds (b). I originally thought that the toy had internal stereo speakers, turns out they do not. There is one speaker dedicated to (a) and one dedicated to (b). The problem is when I go to run the sounds out into a 1/4 jack it does not work. I have tried two mono jacks, a stereo jack, and to combine them into one mono. I have bypassed the jacks and used alligator clamps on the jack itself. None of this has worked the (b) will be incredibly loud with (a) being faint in the background. Once again they work fine hooked up to the internal speakers (which are just cheap, simple speakers with nothing out of the ordinary. Does any one have any idea what is going on?

[daneelolivaw]

hmmm sometimes if the output is too loud on the jack output you are putting in, it's good practice to insert a potentiometer to control the volume and to match the impedance of the speaker putting a resistor between the hot signal and the ground...

[kloroplaster]

When line-out sound is way too loud and distorted it is not good to use a switched jack that bypass the speaker, because I guess of impedance issues. I didn't have the correct resistors to match the impendance so I just soldered the output jack to the speaker terminals and thus leaving the speaker on also while using line out.

[Outaspaceman]

Hmmm...
This explains a problem I was having adding an output to the Vtech Little Smarts Phonics Teacher..
I'm going to experiment with resistors to tame the output...