Xperia Ray :: Sudden Loss Of Radio Tuning-search And Almost Inaudible Music Through Earpiece?

I listen to the phone's FM radio a lot and and play some of my music, and that side of it is important for me. I have a few different earpieces/buds including a couple of SE's that have come with various phones, All was fine yesterday, but this morning I went to listen to some music and the sound was barealy audible - it was playing, but through the earpieces it was extremely feint. Plays fine through the speaker however. I tried six different earpieces, one that came with the phone so is known to be compatible, one that came with my second phone an X10 mini, and two that are generic but work fine with the Ray, and they all had barely-audible sound the same.

I tried the same earphiones with the X10 mini, and all work fine so the earphones are all functioning perfectly.I downloaded a free music player app to test a new installation/registry/files/whatever, but same results. So I suspected a software fault, and did a factory reset (yes, it is that important to me) but still with the same result.BUT that was when I noticed ... when recreating a couple of things again I brought up the FM radio to have it scan for stations as the reset left it empty. Although it recognised that the earpiece/aerial was connected ok there was no movement of the scanning progress-bar/window and then it closed down leaving the tuning-scale on screen but no stations ... I could manually swipe up and down the tuning scale no problem, however no stations were heard/found/registered.

I repeated the 'empty' radio on the X10 mini so I could test the earpiece/aerial function, and when then retuning-in it found all the stations in a heartbeat with both SE earpoeces - I didn't bother to repeat it any further with the others, no point.It is easy to suspect the earpieces until they play the music fine on the other phone and also scan/play FM radio channels... and it is also easy to suspect the phono/wire/connection until you realise that they are transmitting the played music just not at a listenable volume without straining... and also i is easy to think the aerial-function is faulty and it doesn't interface, until on another phone it grabs plenty of channels in its scan in just moments It hasn't been dropped or in water or anything, just worked yesterday evening then not this morning and it was only on my bedside table overnight.

I am still happily on Gingerbread, haven't bothered to go to ICS, not that fusssed about it TBH - so it hasn't been caused in an upgrade/incompatibility problem with ICS.I actually did upgrade to ICS hoping this might cure it, but it was exactly the same then too!So I flashed the phone back to GB (Flashtool+appropriate .ftf), but still it was exactly the same - very low sound and no station search/reset And that's where it has stopped at now.i am thinking I have missed something blindingly obvious, but now I am too close to figure that out anyway, plus also am undoubtedly in need of someone expert.