As most everyone knows the Xbox One came out last week and if you were one of the lucky few to get one you might have noticed the headset is quite uncomfortable and covers only one ear. [octanechicken] has a possible adapter solution that lets you plug-in an older more comfortable chat headset like a Turtle Beach. It is being reported as a functional hack by others in the comments; however it may still be questionable. We say questionable because the first release of this Instructable clearly had a flaw in the wiring, but updated text seems to have fixed that problem. Using a female 2.5 mm stereo inline jack [octanechicken] was able to get the Xbox One headset controller to work with older Xbox 360 chat headsets having a male 2.5 mm plug.
The photos on the instructable are still incorrect so following the text instructions one simply unsolders the wires from within the ear piece and then solders the white wire to the tip connector, blue wire to the middle ring connector and the bare wire to the rear sleeve connector of the female 2.5 mm stereo inline jack. Remember to leave the black wire disconnected and covered with a bit of tape. If you cut the wires instead of unsoldering them, remember to scrape any varnish off before soldering. But what about that black wire?
Following this hack does seem to give you the ability to plug in one of the older chat headset while retaining the full functionality of the Xbox One headset volume and mute. The unused black wire is still a bit of a mystery, when others had connected it with the bare wire it would drain the batteries and cause volume problems. Clearly the controller uses the black wire differently than a simple circuit common. Any hack that actually leaves you with a working solution is still a good hack even if the full understanding isn’t there.
We’d love to hear from other readers that want to take some time to disassemble the headset and evaluate the electronics in order to see if a better more complete DYI adapter solution can be derived. For the microphone side this application note (PDF) from Analog Devices for using MEMS mic with 2-wire could be a good research starting point along with having an example for ECM mic. In the meantime this does seem to be working for others.
Seeing brave people disassemble and hack new and very expensive products to meet their needs, comfort and usability never ceases to amaze. As a good example here is a shameless link to a previous featured article moving the headphone jack on a new Yamaha DGX-630 keyboard.
the amplifier is a “push pull” type and the black wire is the speaker’s negative run, it’s for the speaker and is what is incorrectly called “floating ground” by car stereo people. it can actually drive the speaker backwards to do a full “push and pull” to increase the audio capacity of the speaker.
The right way is to use a isolation transformer in there.
Had to look up what a push pull speaker is. Seems it’s basically two drivers working in reveres tandem. Had no idea, interesting.
Basicaly it’s just the a stereo amp running bridge tied load where the signal is fed through one channel and the inverse signal through the other. The speaker is fed the opposing signals at opposite ends effectively doubling applied voltage.
Correct the black wirevis the – from the speaker. And all speakers are ac current so the speaker swtichs polarity at differant frequencies to give you sound. The xbone heatset already has been isolated coming out of the chat pad. Thats why there is 4 wires and not 3… 2 wires are for the mic and 2 for the speaker..disconnecting the black wire will cauae the speaker not to work… portion not to work.. so you effectively take a system from an isolated duplex(chat pad) into a non isolated (cable) back into an isolated duplex (headset)… I would venture to say that this would be the reason people experience an echo. Because there is no active echo cancellation any more its more of a passive one..u may notice the voice back volume maybe low as well and its because you referencing ground through the 3rd party headset…. which can cause interference. I.e. clicks pops humms and echos…
Oh and the headset is mono not stereo. The Tb headset changes it into stereo..
Also a push pull speaker is called a radiant speaker or active and passive the active speaker drives the passive speaker..
Push pull, huh? Are you aware pushing and pulling is how speakers and amplifiers worked since early conception? All amps no matter the class use AC voltage. Now conventional amplifiers will have one of the speaker leads rest to ground, the other lead (of AC) will handle both sides of the phase. Meaning it will push the cone up, and pull it back down from it’s reference ground. Now with D-class switching both leads to the speaker from the amp are doing the switching, and they alternate the signal between the two. So each output leg does 50% of the work no matter what side of the phase.
With using one of the leads off this adapter to your to your headset, you’d be hard pressed to hear the difference, but you will only be receiving half the signal. Half as in information, not voltage.
Also this Cory guy who is attempting to sound intelligent, is wrong in almost everything he has commented on.
that GMAN He so far explained it well. If anyone is familiar with bridging that is.. LOL
Thank you, please drive thru
So I followed the original instructables but instead of buying a female stereo jack I just soldered the headset wires to the 2.5 mm cable wires plug into the game and chat volume controller that is part of the DX11’s and it works fine. volume seems a touch low but it seemed low on the provided xbox one headset… not really excited about cutting the black wire to see if it changes anything b/c these tiny wires are a pain. Anyone else follow the original and tie black and bare to ground , then change and see an improvement?
I’m gonna try this, ordered a 2.5mm female mounted terminal,
Hopefully be able to fit this within the plug-in control unit :)
I have noticed that the connector on the rear of the XB1 controller is actually a mini hdmi plug !
I just completed this with the black left out. I soldered in a male to male cable-well, half! Plugged into my Turtle Beach X11 set and all was fantastic!
can anybody help me:( i took apart the xbox one mic and was soldering my astro a40 wires there is only 3 wires white , red and copper .by a mistake i burnt away the solder on the ground connection and was wondering is there any other ground i can solder to ?thanks
My wire that runs from my headset volume box to my controller isn’t working, any suggestions please