Can't find an 1/8" headphone jack adapter.... [SOLVED]

[1812dave]

I am deaf in one ear, so when I listen to Pandora or movies, I hear only one channel when using my Bose QC15's (which allow me to attenuate the whine in the audio output of the Bionic). The Bose comes with a very expensive cable that I am loathe to cut into to modify the wiring as I did with my Koss Porta Pro's which I have fixed for combined channels. In the past I tried just about every connector I could find at radio shack to allow me to use an unmodified headset/cable but the only way I could get the connectors to work was to combine three different types and that's just way to bulky and there's too much looseness in the connectors. I was hoping that a #600455 from Monster would work, but looks like it's not going to do the job either.

Does anyone know of a single adapter that will convert the stereo output of the headphone jack into combined channels, so that both channels will be heard in each ear? This sounds like it should be easy to find, but I've looked on and off for several years.

EDIT: I took a chance on a different mono/stereo adapter from radio shack. It works! item #2740368 did the trick. the male part is mono and the female portion feeds both channels to the stereo plug. Now I can enjoy Pandora thru headphones on my Bionic without having to chop up and modify the cabling to my Bose headphones.

 

[anon(167668)]

Re: Can't find an 1/8" headphone jack adapter to combine channels

Newegg.com - Cables To Go 40634 3.5mm Stereo Male to 3.5mm Mono Female Adapter F-M

This sounds like what you want. It's stereo on the male side and mono on the female side. Unfortunately it doesn't specify how it converts to mono, since it could just ignore one channel or might only work with the source signal from one direction. Its pretty cheap though so it might be worth checking out.

 

[DroidST]

Re: Can't find an 1/8" headphone jack adapter to combine channels

depending if you need stereo male or female

1/8" Stereo Jack to 1/8" Mono Plug Adapter - RadioShack.com

1/8" Stereo Plug to 1/8" Mono Plug Adapter - RadioShack.com
Save money at monoprice? ....but Radio Shack may be local to you.

For only $0.26 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 3.5mm Mono Plug to 3.5mm Stereo Jack Adaptor - Gold Plated | 3.5mm <--> 3.5mm Adapters

For only $0.22 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 3.5mm Stereo Plug to 3.5mm Mono Jack Adaptor - Gold Plated | 3.5mm <--> 3.5mm Adapters

 

[1812dave]

Re: Can't find an 1/8" headphone jack adapter to combine channels

Thanks for trying, guys. I have all of those already.

 

[CKwik240]

Re: Can't find an 1/8" headphone jack adapter to combine channels

I had a similar issue when I had to try and combine 2 outputs from my car stereo to a mono amp that had a single channel input. I suspect that headphone signals are similar enough in terms of power and the hardware used to generate the signals so this may apply. Simply combining the signal will likely cause one channel to be weaker than the other. I had experienced something like this when I tried to share speakers between two devices bu using a splitter. Once device would be exceptionally lower in volume than the other. Turns out it has to do with the fact that most output hardware impedance is much lower than that of the speakers (or the amp that drives them). As such, a majority of the current will feed into the other device. Not sure how this might effect headphones which are likely to share hardware and thus the impedance on the output channels, its still likely to be lower than than of the speakers so it may be causing undesirable results in the signal. That said, the fix would be to find an adapter that uses resistors on each channel before combining the signal or make one yourself. Another potential is to seek out a software solution. This would probably ideal and there is a open issue on google's project page. You may want to post there to help increase interest and perhaps get notification if it ever becomes resolved

Can't link the page as its my first post, but the issue ID# is 17337.