Inputting Microphone and Headphone audio into the line in jack

Aaron10 · 22 Aug 2015

Hello all, firstly; apologies for any headaches caused, however, until I buy a capture card I'm recording gameplay through a camera (the quality to my surprise isn't bad either). However picking up the audio requires me to turn up the TV volume quite a lot and also the mic (on my headset) to 100 + 20dB boost in Control Panel > Sound > Recording. As you can imagine, audio is average at best.

So, a cheap solution I thought would be to buy something like this, but I'm not entirely sure it'll work?
3.5mm Male to 2 Dual Female Plug Jack Stereo Audio Headset Mic Y Splitter Cables | eBay

The plan is to basically plug my headsets microphone jack to the red/pink one which will input the audio from that, but for the green, Plug in a male to male audio jack (one of these, which I already have):

From my TV to the green one. But I'm not sure if the green is for inputting or outputting audio?

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So here's where it gets even more complicated:

If the above will work (or you can link me to something that does what I'm wanting), I want to actually listen to the TV audio through my headsets headphones. A simple solution here would be to tick "Listen to this Device" in Control Panel > Sound > Recording, however that also means listening to my voice as well (which I find very offputting).

So, because my headset is like this:

(headphone jack + microphone jack)

I was wondering if this layout would work (excuse the very quickly thrown together illustration):

So what's happening in the image is:

TV headphones port > headphone to 2 headphones splitter
>>Headset' headphone jack in one
>>male to male headphone jack in the other >
headphone port on the splitter < laptops microphone jack in one
headphone port on the splitter < Headset' Microphone jack in the other

Really hope this is possible or someone can think of a similar/simpler way. Also, I realize there may be some degraded quality over all of this equipment. but hopefully not too much.

Thanks in advance.

carwiz · 23 Aug 2015

You cannot attach mismatched impedance devices directly to the PC. Some motherboards will re-task the jack based on the device plugged in and others will go up in smoke or simply turn off the jack.

I'm not a game player but isn't there software that will capture game play?

Aaron10 · 23 Aug 2015

Not from game consoles. I can attach the male to male headphone cable directly to my laptops line in and it's fine so I'd imagine a splitter at least would be fine.

fireberd · 01 Sep 2015

Sorry for being late to this thread but I've been traveling for the last couple of weeks.

The "Line In" jack on a PC is for stereo (two channel) audio BUT is NOT for a computer microphone. A computer microphone requires +5VDC to operate and that is not available on a Line In jack, only on a Microphone input jack. There are some newer laptops that have a combination input jack and it will work on that, but NOT on a PC with separate Line In and Microphone jacks.