Question about wiring headphone jacks and MIC jacks.

Brutuskend

Lifer
Apr 2, 2001
26,558
4
0
I built a computer in a case that has no front audio panel so I built one that fits into a unused floppy drive bay. It has two USB ports, switches for a couple of cold cathode lights and two jacks like these one of which I want to use for a mic and the other for headphones. The problem is, the jacks have 3 wires connecting to them and the mic and headphone header on the motherboard use two and four respectively. The mic has Mic power and Mic2 and the headphone has left, right, +5va and ground. How would I go about hooking up these devices to those jacks? Or will I need to replace them with different jacks in order to get them working correctly?

T.I.A.
 

PurdueRy

Lifer
Nov 12, 2004
13,837
4
0
I have wired stereo connectors before...but not sure about that +5V line on your headphone connector....that one is odd...
 

phisrow

Golden Member
Sep 6, 2004
1,399
0
0
It sounds like your motherboard has some weird headers.

For headphones, Tip is left channel, Ring is right channel, and Sleeve is ground. If you wire the connector up that way it should work.

Mic, Tip is mic output(probably Mic2 in your case; but I'm not sure), Ring is +5v, and Sleeve is ground.
Another possibility is that Tip is bias voltage and signal, and Sleeve is ground. This might be more plausible since your Mic header has only two pins.

I think that those wiring schemes will work, though you'll have to do a bit of futzing to find out for sure.