Splitting the Audio Jack

(Video transcript) Hi. Paul Donovan here from AVTechnician.ca Thanks for watching my channel. This is the channel where we're giving tips and tricks to AV technicians and those who would like to be an AV Technician.

Today I'm going to talk about splitting the audio jack on most of the modern laptops on the market today, or even if you are planning to use your smartphone jack and wanting to split that as well. Often times as an AV Technician we want to get sound into the laptop. Or into your smartphone to use as a recording device. Yet the laptops come with just a single audio jack. And of course the smartphones have a single audio jack -- but let's not talk about the new iphone 7 which has no audio jack, just the lightning connection. We're trying to find a way to get sound into our laptop and all we've got is the single jack. The single jack is a little mini-jack, about this size. It actually needs to have 1, 2, 3, 4 rings in order for it to work. This is referred to as TRRS -- Tip Ring Ring Sleeve. This is the type that is used to to allow to have microphone and hear sound coming from that one jack. But what you need to do to be able to split that jack. You want to have a microphone coming in.

That's when this kind of device comes into play. You'll notice that what this does, it has the mini jack with the four dividers and this end has two connections, one for headphones and the other is for the microphone. Now you have the ability to plug your microphone feed into here, from your mixer board. And this one let's you put your headphones on so you can hear what's happening. This is a very practical way of doing it. This little device I picked up on eBay for three bucks -- whoo hoo -- free shipping. It took a month to get here from China. It looks nice too. A very simple device. This is a lifesaver in the world of AV. You can even use this device with your smartphone if you want to put sound into the phone to use your smartphone as a recording device. Plug this into the jack on the smartphone. Your microphone goes in this one and your headphones go in this one. There you have the ability to get sound into your smartphone.

Another way you can do the exactly same the with a laptop but it doesn't work for the smartphone, you can get a device like this one. This end is a USB plug. Plug this into the USB port on your laptop. And then this end splits the signal out between microphone and headset. Just like we had with the other one, this one also allows you to split. The biggest difference is that when this is plugged into your laptop it is detected like a new sound interface. You can go to your sound settings and be sure that it's going to access this one for sound in and the sound out. You can also continue to use the regular headphone jack for the sound out you just have to manipulate your settings in your laptop. This applies both to a Mac and a Windows computer. Windows (and Mac) have built-in automatic no drivers needs, it's immediately detected and you are away to the races. This is a very important device that allows you to split the sound but in this case it's using USB.

While I'm on the topic I went to eBay to search for lapel microphones. I ended up buying these two. Why two? Because each of them is different. This one is a standard microphone type mini-jack. If you count you'll notice it has 1, 2, 3 - TRS -- Tip Ring Sleeve. This is a standard microphone jack and this would not work if I plugged it into a laptop or my smartphone because there are not enough rings to do what we need to do. It would work with my splitter.

This microphone actually does have the four TRRS -- Tip Ring Ring Sleeve It does have the four things which means I can plug this straight into a jack on the side of a laptop or into my smartphone and away to the races I'm ready to go doing lavalier sound recording. Having these two gives me a bit of flexibility. This one requires a splitter. And this one doesn't need the splitter because it works straight off.

There's a little tip for you about AV Technicians who are attempting to get sound into a laptop or into a smartphone.

This is Paul Donovan from avtechnician.ca Please check out our website at www.avtechnician.ca. Subscribe to this channel to keep up with what's happening in the world of AV technicians. Thank you for watching.

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