Splicing right and left channel to one earbud/headphone

[mollekake]

Hello all!

So i was wondering, since the mini-jack has a wire for each channel, sent to each ear, is it possible to send these two wires to a microcontroller and send the channels as stereo to one side, or split them up and send as right and left, depending on conditions?

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

Well, microcontrollers deal with digital signals, so you can't feed the audio through a microcontroller unless you convert it to digital with an ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) then back again with a DAC (digital-to-analogue converter). This will affect the sound quality unless you use external converters, and in any case adds quite a lot of complexity.

There are a few microcontrollers that include limited analogue processing capabilities in configurable analogue blocks, but these are the exception.

A microcontroller can control circuitry that affects the signals that are fed to each earpiece. This circuitry could involve analogue switches (ICs), VCAs (voltage-controlled amplifiers), or even relays, to do the switching and mixing.

 

[BobK]

You can connect both channels through resistors (1K would do) to a single input on a mono amp to get a mono out.

Bob