I was just wondering if anyone knows if there are any decent mono headphones for iPods or any other portable music players. My wife has lost hearing in one ear, and I know she’d like to keep her iPod if at all possible. Figured you guys might have some advice. Thanks.
You should be able to find a 3.5" mono-stereo plug that you can connect any set of headphones to, but the way around you want is a little unusual. Maybe try somewhere like radio shack?
It’s pretty easy to modify an existing set of cans to work mono; the only hitch is that if you are very picky/audio snobby you may hear some phase issues and etc. with the passive summing of signals that will result.
A standard Ipod uses a TRS plug, or tip/ring/sleeve. The standard convention for a stero TRS plug is is tip= + left, Ring = + right side, and sleeve = ground.
To passively sum a stereo TRS plug to mono, all you need to do is short the tip and ring signals, and maiintain the earth/ground as is.
Do this in the following manner:
- Cut the TRS plug off your headphones. Leave some lead/cable to work with.
- Expose and identify the leads from the TRS plug. You should have 2 positive and 2 ground. Twist the two hot leads from the TRS plug together, and the two ground leads together.
- Expose and identify the leads from the earpieces. You should have 2 positive and 2 ground. Twist the two hot leads together, and the two ground leads together.
- Solder the hot leads to the hot leads, and the ground leads to the ground leads. Cover with heat shrink or tape.
- You now have 2 mono earpieces. You can cut one off if you care to.
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Thanks! I’ve got enough old earbuds sitting around that I could give this a try. I was just a little worried about cutting the plug off without knowing what I’d find on the other side. That sounds like it should avoid the problems with shorting out one of the channels to ground that I’d run into by using “real” mono headphones, which would probably just be a TS plug. Now, where’s my soldering iron?