Microphone audio cables

I made up a bunch of short audio cables because of funny microphone plug configurations. Not all laptops work well with electret microphones.

The Dell Latitude 810 is much like the Dell Latitude 800, but without the built in microphone. These didn't like our microphone which required plug in power.

I'll write something a little longer here one day.

Basically, electret microphone requires a small amount of power to make them work. The stereo audio plug has three contacts: tip, connector A, stem. Some laptops don't put the power out in the way the microphone expects for plug in power. I then bought some different microphones which supplied their own plug in power via a small battery, but they had mono audio plugs. This meant that the middle connector and the stem were being shorted out. So the microphones still didn't work.

My solution was to purchase stereo plugs and sockets, and then wire them together so that the middle connector was no connected at all, thus it wasn't being short circuited.

This took a few minutes with a multimeter to diagnose.

End solution: a hell of a mess, but it works, which is what I'm after.