4 pole headset plugged into 3 pole headphone jack?

Trixanity · December 30, 2015

The other way around works fine but this particular setup just doesn't work.

A family member only has a headset she got with her phone but she's trying to watch Netflix on her laptop. Laptop is an HP Pavilion with 2 regular headphone jack and a microphone jack (strange by today's standards with only combo jacks).

The headset is plugged into the headphone jack. It plays audio but the channel separation is a bit weird I'd say and dialog is completely muffled like if you had a surround setup with a dead center channel. It's only barely perceptible that the dialog is spoken and you can clearly see the subtitles for reference.

Actually she had two of these headsets. She also has an older one with a call button. If she presses and holds this, the audio actually sounds fine. Quite strange but it's obviously annoying and difficult to binge on Netflix while holding a button pressed for hours.

Obviously there is a hardware compatability issue. Is there a way to work around it with software? I know the obvious solution is to buy regular 3 pole headphones but I'd like to avoid a solution involving money.

ALwin · December 30, 2015

You can try looking for an adapter that will split your 4-pole headphone jack into 2 separate jacks, one for line out, the other for line in (mic).

There is no way to solve this with software because each pole serves a different purpose. One for GND (Ground), one for Left, One for Right and one for Mic. It's the physical electrical circuit connection.

NinjaJc01 · December 30, 2015

The fault is electrical, you can't solve it without an adaptor.

EDIT: My turtle beach headset uses the same connector, so I know about this kind of thing.

ALwin · December 30, 2015

You would need something like this to split it off, or an adapter (without the mic jack part) that basically dead ends the mic pole on your headphone and only passes through the other 3 poles.

Trixanity · December 30, 2015

I figured :-/ but thought it was worth a shot considering that the call button fixes it temporarily.

I think with shipping prices and all, I might as well buy a cheapo in ear solution for insured compatibility.

I've burned myself before when buying adapters to do the opposite (to convert separate headphone and mic jacks into one for use with combo jack), which didn't work properly.

Thanks for the answers!