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I have a set of headphones that have a built-in mic for hands-free calling. They just work great on my Sony Ericsson Cedar cellphone.

The problem is that when I connect headphone to my Dell N5010 laptop to listen to music, the quality is horrible, with very weak or no vocals.

They funny part is when I hold down the talk button on the mic (headphone mic), at which point it sounds great, but goes back to bad quality as soon as I release talk button. Also, when I take out the jack a little, at some point, the sound is great but I have to hold the jack there.

I looked for any configuration on the sound card driver but find nothing.

Besides using a glue to hold down the talk button of mic :), is there any other solution?

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I have a muc simpler solution: dont push the plug all the way in! I had the same problem with the plug oushed all the way in, but when I pulled it out so that one "ring" was outside the jack, the problem disappeared. – user104759 Nov 9 '11 at 19:31
Thanks! I am practically using this solution ;) – Isaac Nov 10 '11 at 19:37
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1 Answer

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TRS and TRRS Jacks

I'm afraid you won't be able to fix the problem by software. There are two types of jacks:

  • Those headsets have a three-way jack, with a tip, two rings and a sleeve (left, right and microphone plus a ground - middle in the image). Those are called TRRS.
  • Standard headphones uses only two channels, i.e. tip and ring (for stereo, left in the image), the sleeve is used for ground. They're called TRS.

enter image description here

The Problem

The thing is: Your phone will fit the jack. Your laptop however probably won't - it could be that one of the stereo rings doesn't match the laptop's output jack perfectly. The laptop will only have two internal connectors (for stereo), whereas the jack has three. The stereo ones will have to overlap exactly. This is why you have to pull out the jack a little in order to get it working. In the image you can see that this is a matter of millimeters.

From Wikipedia:

TRRS plugs do not work properly with a TRS stereo jack if the ground contact in the jack connects to the microphone contact on the plug

Pressing the talk button may short-circuit something so that you achieve the same effect as pulling the jack out.

The Solution

See if you can buy a TRRS to TRS connector.

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Is there any common solution (maybe a 3 to 2 jack converter) in the store for this? – Isaac Apr 17 '11 at 15:50
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The most common solution would be using an adaptor‌​, yes. There seem to be some TRRS to TRS ones, it would probably involve some googling. I didn't find anything on Amazon yet, but here's one! (Not quite a bargain though) – slhck Apr 17 '11 at 15:56
Thanks. But $19.25 is a little expensive. actually I bought the headphones with $10 :D. It seems the glue solution is cheaper :P OR maybe i would make my own TRRS-to-TRS adapter... – Isaac Apr 17 '11 at 16:05
Yes, you'll probably be able to pick up the components way cheaper and solder them yourself if you have the skills. Or just buy a pair of new headphones :) – slhck Apr 17 '11 at 16:09
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