Loading…
A small USB sound card that plugs into a USB port and gives you a 3.5mm headphone output and a 3.5mm microphone input, for when a laptop or desktop's own audio jack is missing, broken or already in use.
This is a generic USB 2.0 external sound card.
One end is a USB-A plug that goes into your computer; the other end splits into two 3.5mm jacks on a short 15cm lead, a green stereo output for headphones or speakers and a pink mono input for a microphone.
Inside is a C-Media style USB audio chipset that the computer treats as a standard USB Audio Class sound device.
That means there are no drivers to install: plug it into a Windows, macOS, Linux or PlayStation 4 machine and it appears as a selectable sound device straight away.
It is bus-powered, drawing everything it needs from the USB port, so there is no separate power brick to carry.
In practice it is the quick fix when a machine cannot handle audio on its own. If a presenter's laptop has a dead or missing combo headphone jack, this restores a working headphone and mic path.
It adds a basic mic input to a desktop that only has speakers, gives a spare audio route for calls, streams and training sessions, and serves as a reliable backup when a built-in sound chip is unreliable.
It is a consumer-grade adapter with a stereo output and a single mono mic input, not a studio interface, so there is no XLR socket and no phantom power for condenser microphones.
Add headphone and mic sound over USB when a device's own jack is gone
