Shoutbox

is there anyway that i can let the person who im talking to on an audio conversation in msn hear my music straight from my computer instead of having to put a mic up close to the speakers and sometimes get static which makes a dead anoying noise

If youve got a bit of money to spare, there is a small hardware fix for this.  youd need to split and amplify your speaker output, and get a dual input for your microphone.  then using a jack - jack cable, link the spare speaker output into the spare mic input.

I dont know of a software fix, but if there is one, im sure itll be posted soon

how much do these things cost

If it's the device I'm thinking of they are incredibly cheap.  I've never seen one more than £1.99.

Yeah, you'll need an audio splitter and audio cable to do that on hardware level:

Splitter: http://www.triplebit.com/images/Splitter-1.jpg
Cable: http://home.earthlink.net/~mac-minidisc/Mac-MD/Images/cable.jpg

Put the splitter into you audio-out of your soundcard (where your speaker cable is now), then in one of the two splitter connections you put the speaker cable, in the other you put the cable you bought. Then put the other end of the cable you bought into your mic input (where you microphone cable would be normally. Done.

If you would like to use you micropohe too at the same moment you could buy another splitter so you can connect the cable an mic at the same time .

The parts are very cheap, the cable is probally the most expensive. Ask for the shortest cable they have because the longer the cable the higher the price.

As for the technical stuff, ask for this:
- 3.5 millimeter stereo audio splitter
- 3.5 millimeter male to male audio cable (can be either mono or stereo, microphone is mono anyway). Most stores the sell computer or audio parts will have it.

TO KNOW:

* Don't use another cable or adapter (stereo vs. mono) unless it is stated that you can. This is very important, because otherwise you'll loose one of the two channels (left or right)!!!!!

* To use these hardware-solutions, your soundcard must be full duplex. This means it can play and record sound at the same time. Almost all soundcards are full duplex these days, but older cards aren't.

* Be carefull if you record sound thru the microphone and you play sound with your speakers at the same time. This can cause feedback if you put your microphone to close to your speakers, or if your speakers are set too loud.

* Connecting the line-out to your microphone-in on "bad" soundcards can cause distortion on your speakers, even if you are not recording or playing anything.

* Determining the difference between a stereo jack and a mono jack is very easy: A stereo jack will have 2 colored "rings" (mostly black) on its plug, a mono will only have 1...

* Audio cables and adapters work in both ways. This means for example, a 1x "Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 2x "Stereo Jack Female Sockets" will convert 1 stereo signal (on the male plug) to 2 stereo signals (on the female sockets), but will also convert 2 stereo signals (on the female sockets) to 1 stereo signal (on the male plug).

* Prices for cables and adapters can differ very much. Mostly it depends on the materials they are made of: Gold plated plugs are far better, but cost much more. Also it depends on common use: mono to stereo converters (components d, e, f) are more expensive then splitters (components a, b) or extension cables (component c).

* The following setups can be achieved with different kind of adapters and cables. But here I'll give the "shortest" solutions...

DIFFERENCES IN HARDWARE:

Setup A
* PC Microphone socket is true stereo.
* Microphone is a (true) stereo microphone.

Setup A bis (special case)
* PC Microphone socket can have a stereo (left and right) input signal but will output a mono signal to your motherboard (it will combine the two signals of a stereo signal to 1 mono signal).
* It doesn't matter if your microphone is mono or (true) stereo.
* In this case refer to Setup A and its components a and c.

Setup B
* PC Microphone socket is true stereo.
* Microphone is a mono microphone.

Setup C
* PC Microphone socket is mono.
* Microphone is a (true) stereo microphone.

Setup D
* PC Microphone socket is mono.
* Microphone is a mono microphone.

Notes
* Having a stereo microphone is very rare (and more expensive), thus most likely you have a mono microphone...
* On most PC's, the microphone plugins are also mono...
* The above makes that most likely your setup would be setup D.

COMPONENTS:

a) A so called "splitter".
Type: "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 2x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Female Sockets"
This exists in the form of an adapter or as a cable.

b) A so called "splitter".
Type: 1x "3.5mm Mono Jack Male Plug" > 2x "3.5mm Mono Jack Female Sockets"
Instead of this mono type, you can use the stereo type (see component a).

c) A normal stereo jack cable.
Type: 1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug"

d) A special stereo/mono jack cable.
Type: 1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 1x "3.5mm Mono Jack Male Plug"
This cable combines the left and right stereo signal into 1 mono signal.
This cable can be hard to find though.

Instead of this one cable (if you can't find one), you can use various other combinations to come to the conversion. eg:
   1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 2x "Phono (RCA) Female Sockets"
   connect to
   2x "Phono (RCA) Male Plugs" > 1x "Phono (RCA) Male Plug"
   connect to
   1x "Phono (RCA) Female Socket" > 1x "3.5mm Mono Jack Male Plug"

e) A special jack adapter (or cable).
Type: 1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Male Plug" > 1x "3.5mm Mono Jack Female Socket"
This adapter (or cable) combines the left and right stereo signal into 1 mono signal.
It can be hard to find and of course there are again other alternatives/combinations to come to the same result.
The difference with the above (component d) is that this one has a "Mono Female Socket" instead of a "Mono Male Plug".

f) A special jack adapter (or cable).
Type: 1x "3.5mm Mono Jack Male Plug" > 1x "3.5mm Stereo Jack Female Socket"
This adapter (or cable) combines the left and right stereo signal into 1 mono signal.
Again, it can be hard to find and there are other alternatives/combinations to come to this.
It is the opposite of the above (component e).

If you microphone is not a true stereo microphone, but has a stereo jack plug, then you can do without this component f. This is because in that case the microphone is actually a mono microphone, but will output its signal to both the left and right channel of the plug; Both channels are exactly the same, so it doesn't matter if you loose a channel of the microphone signal...



picture was here

EDIT: whooohoooo, thanks to WDZ, this thread was restored from the dead. Unfortunatly the big picture explaining all the setups isn't. So sorry for that...

Whoa Did you type that all? Nice information .

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
A stereo jack will have 2 black "rings" on its plug, a mono will only have 1

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Those rings are not neccasary black, i seen them with green too. Further than that nothing to add.

quote:

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Originally posted by MenthiX
Whoa Did you type that all?

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Somehow I doubt it.

I just wanted to say that you can just setup a SHOUTcast radio server on your computer, so the other person could connect to your computer via Winamp. Then, you can switch the input mode between mic and sound card (which means they'll hear exactly what you hear from the computer speakers).

To do that, you need to run the SHOUTcast server software on your computer (or on a remote server with lots of bandwidth to spare). The server first waits for a connection from the "DJ", then it allows listeners to connect. Note that you need to configure the server before running it, see the docs. The server is highly configurable and has a nice Web interface, logs, and many advanced features, but it's not too difficult to get it started. You basically just need to configure a port, a broadcaster password and max. listeners.

To start broadcasting, you need to connect to the server as a DJ (even if it's on your local computer, in which case you connect to localhost). This can be done via Winamp 2/5, using a Winamp plug-in called "the SHOUTcast DSP plug-in".
The SHOUTCast site is extremely outdated, so it says the plug-in is for Winamp 2.x, but it should work with version 5 as well.

After installing the plug-in, you can open its window from the "Plug-ins -> DSP/Effect" section in Winamp's Preferences (Ctrl+P). Then you do some configuration and connect to the server to start broadcasting. You can switch between mic and sound card in the rightmost tab. You can also set a name for your server which is attached to the song titles, and of course you can choose different bitrates, depending on your upstream speed limit.

I hope that's useful to anyone...

quote:

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Originally posted by sock

quote:

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Originally posted by MenthiX
Whoa Did you type that all?

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Somehow I doubt it.

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Errrmm... I actually did, and I also created the screenshots... everything is homemade (and it took me far too much time)

quote:

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Originally posted by sock
I hope that's useful to anyone...

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Certainly is to me... thanks