Mixer for connecting 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks to multiple devices at the same time?

tvholic

Member
I have - and use - several computers, both at home and at work. When telecommuting, the confusion gets even bigger.

Some have two separate 3.5mm TRS jacks for the microphone and the headphones (like my personal laptop and tower).
Others have a single 3.5mm TRRS jack for both (like the MacBook Pro and the work laptop).

I have a separate microphone and headphones, so with separate TRS cables.
I also have an adapter that came with the microphone, with two 3.5mm TRS female plugs and one 3.5mm TRRS male.
In other words, I can connect the microphone and headphones separately to my personal laptop, or I can connect them to the adapter, and connect the adapter to the Mac. When I want to switch computers, I have to go around taking the adapter off and on.

There has to be some simple way to connect all this together. It's a brutal mess every day, because I use these computers at the same time, and sometimes I even want to listen to their audio at the same time (for example, to be on call on one of the computers but be able to hear notifications from the other without being on speaker)

Ideally, what I'm looking for is a "box" where on one side I connect the microphone and headphones, and on the other side I connect each input of each computer. Then, on the box itself, I choose the volume of each channel.
I think this is a simple mixing desk. However, when I look for them, I always find things that are very different, much more complex, very expensive, or have different inputs (like XLR).

I've thought about doing this by hand, but I know I'm going to mess up on an electrical level (for example, I don't think it's a good idea to directly interconnect the outputs of two different computers, I imagine the feedback could fry things). At the same time, it seems like a relatively simple thing to do.

Does what I am looking for exist? Can you suggest keywords to search better than "3.5mm headphone microphone mixer"? Or is there some reason I'm not seeing for something like this not to exist?
 

Lily15

Member
The streamers who use 2 pcs (1 to play and another to stream) are doing what you want no? The second pc gets the sound and picture over the network and they can regulate each volume. Most of them use the voicemeeter banana (or voicemeeter potato) and obs. I can't tell you how to do it all of a sudden but search on the net and you will find it easy...
 

tvholic

Member
My idea is to have something analog, for several reasons: latency, isolation (computers on separate networks), and independence (the other computers can be turned off).
 

TomasM

Member
The closest thing you could find would be an audio mixer, but not for what you want.
Ideally, you should rethink that or look for other alternatives.
 

BigZ

Member
The audio level is basically a mixing desk... The question of placing the microphone is what makes it difficult. Eventually, it could be a separate track or a single input (micro) and output A/B track for each pc.
 
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