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Audio card headhpone-out port and 3-channel headphones

J

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I just got a new set of headphones with an integrated mic, that has a single 3.5mm plug with three conductors at the end. The mic wasn't an important factor in the purchase and so I overlooked it's presence for a while...until I tried to plug it into the headphone output of my sound card (Asus Xonar DX). It seems that you can't just plug in a set of these 3-channel (left, right, mic) into a standard 2-channel output and have the basic left/right channels work correctly. At least not on this sound card.

Have others run into this? Is my only solution to buy a splitter cable of some sort to split out the mic channel in one dongle and the regular two-channel on another?

I did find that if I only pushed the 3.5mm plug in part way that the audio worked normally, but this doesn't seem to be too robust - it's prone to jostles causing disconnects.
 
Yes, you'll need a splitter. However, if you only have three conductors on the connector, then surely the headphones are single-channel. If 4 conductor, then it should be easy to find a Y-cable.
 
I misspoke, so to speak. It has 3-channels, so 3 'breaks' or 'sections' on the 3.5mm male plug. Thus it would be 4 conductors is my guess. It's the same standard used by newer earbud + microphone setups on most cell phones.

I guess was just hoping that the conductor spacing on 2-channel audio card headphone output would still match up to the L/R contacts of a 3-channel plug. That doesn't appear to be the case.
 
These headphones have a built in volume control, too. A little inline switch very similar to the how the Apple earbuds have. Can I expect the audio control on this headset to work? Is that just a driver issue? (Assuming that the hardware can recognize the signal.) It works on my laptop (Macbook).
 
You'll need a regular splitter cable then, to a 1/8" TS and TRS.

No, the left and right don't match up. On some jacks they will, but on most they do not.

The volume control is completely independent of anything it is plugged into.
 
I expect it is more of a physical problem, i.e. where the connectors in the socket actually touch the plug. Are you plugging it directly into the card? Does your case have a front panel headphone socket that is connected to the soundcard? have you tried it in there?
 
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