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Headset without power supply, How?
Hi,
Recently i bought this headset
it works really great, i can plug it into my xbox one controller or into the pc's green audio input
now my question is how does it power itself? is it possible that the headset gets power from a 3.5 mm jackplug?
i've never seen this before, i used to use Creative HS-1000 Fatal1ty headset which obviously was powered through USB. How can this headset survive without charges?
Comments
I have to add that this headset comes with a extended cable you can plug on that has green and red outputs, for pc usage. if you plug out this extended cable you can put it into the xbox controller.
You can grab a small amount of power via a 3.5mm jack, obviously not a lot, but enough to power a microphone.
A 3.5mm headphone jack can power any decent headphone like this. The dynamic drivers take the analog audio directly and don't have any electronics that need to be powered.
The USB headphones you used get their digital audio feed over USB and use the USB power for powering the electronics used to decode the digital audio and power the dynamic drivers.
You should have seen the 90s and headsets then...
thanks guys thats pretty amazing, i never expected that!
while the headset doesnt go very high in volume the sound quality is alright
how is it possible that the audio channel doesnt get interrupted by the power input?
is the audio and power seperated inside the cable?
With the 3.5mm jack? The electrical analog audio signal is the power for the drivers. The 2 wires for each channel go directly to the dynamic drivers and the anlog electrical audio signal is the power for them. Dynamic headphones are just a coil of wire and a magnet.
For the USB headphones there are several wires and the power wires are separate from the digital audio.
i need some time to process this, it sounds vague to me. sorry man but thanks for the info!
wow. that's an unexpected answer from you...
I'd really expected something containing the words "f*cking" and "millenials" :-D
for the question I honestly can't tell what to think of, leaves me just wondering.
sorry @Mark_R really no offense meant, I am probably just getting old...
need to get used to increasing questions about basic electronic principles nowadays I guess.
its not clear enough, i really have to dive into this
No problem, too bad you just added garbage really.
the 3.5mm jack usually gets powered by a small amplifier that's made for exactly that purpose - driving (passive) headphones. that's the way people used to hear music from whatever device for decades with headphones before anything like usb or even bluetooth came up to the mix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphone_amplifier
for the microphone there is even less 'power' involved, as it is essentially just some kind of sensors which doesn't need much current to do it's work.
as said I am sorry, no offense - I am just kind of shocked by that kind of question about things I'd consider well-known electronic basics in tech related board ;-)
The audio signal itself powers the unit. However if you need to increase the volume using the device itself, then you need an amplifier that gets power from other source. Headset can only produce as much sound as the current fed from the audio jack.
"The audio signal itself powers the unit" how? isnt the audio channel seperated from the power channel?
power x audio, if thats in the same channel wouldnt that mess up the audio?
there is no power channel, as there simply is no active electronic inside the headphone that need power.
essential there is a speaker, which consists of a coil and some mechanical parts (cone/diaphragma). the amplified audio signal is running through that coil which produces a magnetic field that moves that mechanical parts of the speaker...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_driver
edit: maybe think of it the other way around... in an active/usb connected headset you most likely have active components like an amplifier inside the headset itself. those will need power to process the signal including amplifying the resulting analog audio to a level that can drive the coil of the speakers itself.
if you'd open them, you'd find the last part of the connection between the electronic stuff and the actual speaker to be just a small pair of two wires.
with your passive headset all that electronic stuff is already inside your device (xbox/PC/mobile), you just have that two wire connection (for each channel) in a longer cable from the device to your ears.
ever wondered how wired earplugs are different? they aren't, no additional power. they are just smaller to fit inside your ear instead beside ;-)
The audio signal itself provides the power, This is how your iPod and iPhone/Android phone wired headphones work.
It would very slightly but not enough to affect the sound you hear from your headphones. Every time you measure a signal you change it slightly. Physics ;-)
T'is magic.
All microphone jack inputs from a PC sound card or devices like a camcorder, an xbox or even an i-phone do have power in a different frequency than the audio has (e.g. headphones) and there is no any interference.
There are two types of jack plug. One of them has two rings and a sleeve (rings are the smaller on the top of the plug connections and sleeve is the one that combines the return of the signals and is on the bottom of the plug, near the cable). This connection is used for audio output only, aka, to give sound to the headphones. If this is the case, there is an extra plug with just one ring and the sleeve (mono plug), to be used for the separate microphone input.
The other one, is combining a third ring between the first two and the sleeve (three rings in total and a sleeve on the jack, the first two "rings" are the left and right audio signals and the third is the mic output signal).
The voltage on the connection (in the third ring or in the single ring when there is separate plug for audio and mic) can vary from 150mV on 32 ohm, voltage that can only power some dynamic (or passive) microphones (this type of power it called "bias") or the standard 1.5(rare) to 5 volt, that can power condenser microphones (or active ones), mostly the low power -usually cheap- small, lavalier microphones or mics on a headset.
More professional microphones do need indeed more power, the so called "phantom power" that is usually 48 volt or, in some rare cases, 11 volt, divided in a separate connection on a "balanced connection" that eliminates any interference from any other internal or external source. In this case, the input device (usually a sound mixer) must have a "phantom power" capability, to give 48 volt as power to the condenser / dynamic microphone.
TL'DR
All microphone plugs do have some power, depending on what type of the microphone. In your case, you need ~0.5 to 1 volt to trigger and power the microphone and all the pc-like inputs (sound card, xbox) or camcorders do have this kind of power. After all, even audio signals are electric signals that carry frequencies which transformed to sounds.
Hope I helped you understand the way microphone inputs and power works.
Well, this also is electrical power. In fact, there is a frequency change (something like a dynamically and continuously change of the electric power on an audio signal) that either can be translated from another device to audio (e.g. a recorder) or, in case of a headset or a loudspeaker, trigger a coil that is surrounding a magnet and changes the magnetic field of this magnet with thousands of small moves per second the woofer of the speaker - this creates audio waves our ears can hear.
So, even headset output do have power, even if this is mV (milivolts) and low watts just to produce the change of a magnetic field from the headphone magnets.
And in very simple words, it's THE ELECTRICITY what you hear!
I'd really expected something containing the words "f*cking" and "millenials" :-D
Mark's old-skool LET, doesn't deserve being tarred with that particular brush.
even if ppl would 'tar' me its just the sheep who cares, not the people who also wanna find out the answer. i've been away from LET a while just to see how things will 'evolve' im not going to comment on that but all i will share is that i rather watch comments by people who actually post something we could use rather than political garbage. im also surprised @AnthonySmith became admin, im not going to share my personal thoughts about it but i believe it equals more restriction and less entertainment.
Pretty sure you just did there, mate
Good.
He just pulled a "No offence, but... offensive stuff here"
Welcome to the new world order
be less restrictive, sink less threads, allow people to have their say. without logging into LET i've seen you cut off some potential threads that people might would've wanna comment on. become more laid back and only take action when LET is going to be in legal trouble. admins before you took this approach and it kept threads alive. no doubt your structure could bring something to the table but give some free space!