Heaphones plugged into 2 sources

[nsibley]

I have an xbox one, a pc, and a pair of headphones.  I sometimes play xbox games with my friends and I will use my computer to browse or listen to music etc. in between games.  Right now I have my pc audio coming through my speakers and my xbox audio coming through my headset.  I was wondering if there was some way I could have both the pc audio and the xbox audio to come through the headphones at the same time.  If so, what would be the way to do this that would give me the highest quality?  I read something about mixers being a solution to this, but I am not totally sure how that would work or how I would plug it up.  Would I need a preamp for both devices?  Do I need a preamp at all?  I already have an amp, dac, and external sound card for these headphones.  Where in the chain should the mixer go?  Thanks in advance for any help.

[Sturalke]

The easiest way to do this would probably to pass the audio from the Xbox through the PC and from there into the headphones. You can plug it into the line-in/microphone jack on the computer, right click on the sound icon in the task bar tray, click on "Recording Devices", find the line-in device that corresponds to the jack you plugged the Xbox into, right click on that, go to properties, go to the "listen" tab, and enable "Listen To This Device." Be aware that this will create a very very small delay in the audio for your Xbox. It's hardly noticeable, and you get used to it very quickly.

If the delay is too much for you to handle, you will need to invest in a small audio mixer. There's some really cheap ones out there such as the Behringer MicroMix MX400, but typically you may need to get either new cables or an adaptor. This mixer has 1/4" jacks. http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-MX400-BEHRINGER-MICROMIX/dp/B000KGYAYQ

[nsibley]

Awesome, thanks for the response.  How would I plug the xbox into the mixer?  My current headphones plug into the optical input on the back of the xbox.  Is there a mixer that would work for this?  Or a cable adapter?  I will admit I'm not super knowledgeable about mixers and what makes them good or bad.  I would be willing to spend a couple hundred bucks on the mixer as long as it is quality.

[Sturalke]

Well, to be honest, doing anything with that optical audio port is difficult. There are some converters like this Insignia Optical/Coaxial to RCA adapter, but I can't guarantee quality on something like this. The Xbox One also doesn't support a USB DAC so that's out of the question. Another good way to do this is to output the audio to your TV with HDMI, and then from there send it to the computer or mixer. The problem is that the Xbox One only supports digital audio out, and we need it in analogue.

 

As far as mixers go, I'm not the one to talk to. I've gotten my rear-end roasted more than once here. You want to be careful about it if you do go looking for stuff though. It tends to get mighty expensive. I do know that if there are mixers that use S/PDIF (optical) inputs, and I didn't see any, they would be quite expensive.

 

I don't know if I read it correctly, so you can ignore this if it doesn't apply. If your headphones have an optical audio jack that makes things harder. Since mixing these inputs with a stand-alone mixer requires that we have the audio in analogue format, we have to get yet another adapter to take it from analogue back to digital. In this case, the audio delay from all that conversion makes it pointless to spend all that money. Also, if your headset is optical based, then you will need to devise another way to connect the microphone back to the console. In this case it may be more cost effective to acquire a new headset with separate 3.5mm plugs for microphone and stereo, and using some clever wiring with one of these guys.

[nsibley]

That was very helpful, thanks for the response.  I'm probably gonna try to figure out something with a mixer.