Title sounds weird right? It is! The trick is that even if your headphone doesn't have a microphone, you can actually speak into the earpiece (the thing you put over your ear to listen in) and it will act as a microphone. I know it sounds strange, but it's tried and tested, and worked with most headphones I tested with. I mean headphones, NOT earphones!



It worked with my cheapish China-made headphone, so give it a try if you want.

How to make it work?

Steps:

1. Plug in the "out" jack, usually green in color, into the microphone hole, usually pink or red, in your soundcard or laptop.


2. Step 1 is correct! I'm not dumb! I said, plug the line-out jack into the line-in socket! :P

3. To test it, fire up Windows Sound Recorder or any sound recorder you might have at hand. Try Audacity if you ain't got anything. It's freeware.

4. Now, increase your volume either in windows, or on the headphone itself, or even both. Just set all mixers to high.

5. Speak into the headphone's earpiece. Righhht... Strange huh? Try! You should see Sound Recorder picking up a sound. I'm not joking! Proof: (You can't know how much I had to maintain my shout to get a good shot! :s )


6. You can try speaking into the right and left earpiece to see which is better.

7. Save the sound and replay it. You should hear what you said in your recording.

My guess on how this trick works:

When you are using the headphone normally, the line-out is plugged into the line-out socket and all, your soundcard sends electric pulses which represent the sound, and a membrane vibrates creating the sound.

Here you are reversing the process. When you are speaking into the earpiece, your voice makes the membrane vibrate. This vibration is translated into electric pulses and sent to your soundcard. Since you have the line-out (that feeds the earpieces) connected to line-in, these pulses are interpreted as an input signal and your voice gets recorded. If you hadn't reversed the jacks, ie. line-out to line-in socket, it wouldn't have worked.

And yeah, don't bother plugging your line-in (microphone) into line-out socket. Your mic cannot play sounds! :P


Try it for yourself. If you got any question, or comments, you are free to comment! :P I wanted to share this trick that I read somewhere, maybe on a forum, I forgot! :)

PS: I know there is now a huge delay in my postings! Uni resumed and I am kinda busy. I will try to post as often as possible, but no promises! :)