Question USB port adapter to stereo in out help please ...

[xtal_01]

OK, my wife wanted to play something on one program .... mix it with her voice .... then put it back into the computer on a zoom session.

So .... she had an external mixer a few decent powered microphones ....

I bought a cheap USB to audio adapter ... think it was $10

It had a USB plug to go into the laptop.

The small enclosure had two 3.5mm plugs.

I took one (output) to an open channel on the mixer.

I took the other from the mixer out put (that had now combined the computer output with a microphone) and fed that back into the other jack on the adapter.

It works ...well I bought two or three and one worked.

** I was going to post a picture of the site I got it from but it is gone and looking at other sites I see some are 3 pole and some are 4 pole inputs *** I just wanted a three pole stereo jack (or RCA jacks or ...) **

I also might have made a mistake in that they are all marked microphone input .... I am putting in line level ( I always thought this was about 0-1 volt) from the mixer.

She used it several times.

Problem .... I am sure the audio is not great quality.

She wants to do this again ... maybe even more microphones so the mixer idea is still great.

Is there a better adapter I can get ?

I am guessing (you are talking to a none electronics guy) there is an a/d and d/a converter in there (don't know how since it is soooooo small).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks .... Mike

 

[Paperdoc]

First question: does the laptop NOT have any earphone output or microphone input jacks? I assume it does not, and that is why you are using a USB sound adapter module.

In quick checks I can see some of these adapters are poor, especially on the mic side. A small hint there: if the unit is able to handle low-level signals from a mic as well as Line level signals, it MAY overload if the Line signal coming back from the mixer is too high. That would produce distortions. ONE unit I read about apparently has an Automatic Gain Control you cannot disable on the Mic input, so whenever there is NO sound coming into the mic line, it boosts itself to create noise.

One from Creative Labs I came across sounded good (pardon that pun!) in the user comments

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Lab...48693109&sprefix=usb+sound,aps,96&sr=8-5&th=1

Although it works out of the box, several users strongly recommend you download and use the Creative Labs software that comes free with it. In that you can DISable some audio enhancement options that may actually interfere with good sound, especially if you are making your own adjustments with a mixer.

Most of these that have separate Mic and Speaker jacks do use the three-contact TRS system, not the 4-contact TRRS system. So that is not likely your issue. DO note, however, that the Mic input typically is MONO only, not stereo. You MAY need to take that into account in feeding a mixed signal back from your mixer. Most such systems, however, will work OK - often they just feed the left stereo channel into a Mono imput and ignore the right channel. IF you can change a setting on the mixer to output mono audio that might help. MAYBE check whether your local Mic signal is feeding though the left channel.