Quick Tip: Turn your Headphones into a Microphone

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Comments: 8

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Abduzeedo, one of the web’s fastest-growing design blogs, recently announced that they are collecting video and audio of people pronouncing the website name. I noticed one person asked what he could do if he didn’t have a microphone or webcam—so here’s an answer in three simple steps!

Grab a pair of headphones.
Plug them into your microphone jack. (That’s the pink one!)
Open an audio-recording program and start recording. Test speaking in both sides of the headphones to see which picks up sound.

I like Audacity and VirtualDub for open-source audio and video recording and editing. I hope this is helpful, and don’t forget to submit your clip to Abduzeedo! :)

Allison House

Category: Miscellaneous

More of: audio, tip

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Comments

MechMykl

01/29/2009
9:04 AM

Wow, how is this possible??

Allison

01/29/2009
9:27 AM

The friend who showed this to me a few years back explained it as “reverse headphones.” Since microphones convert sound to signal and headphones convert signal to sound, I guess switching jacks just flips their functions. (Of course, I’m not 100% sure about the technical accuracy of my assumption…)

Fabio Sasso

01/29/2009
10:09 AM

Thanks a lot for the tip Allison I didnt know that was possible :)

Best,

Rolly Tempo

01/29/2009
7:04 PM

Yeah, I was wondering how this worked. It seems most speakers can be turned into a microphone. Microphones work by translating vibrations using a thin membrane that reacts to pressure. Line in accepts a signal, and line out sends out a signal. So I’m guessing what produces sound in headphones is also capable of translating sound back into a signal. The most common technology behind headphones are moving coil driver, which were derived from microphone technology. That probably is why it works. I can’t really guarantee any of this since I just spent 5 min skimming wikipedia.