I’ve tried a few specialty forums already, but got no response. Either my question is too specific or too simple, or maybe misplaced. I’ve got a 360 hooked up to a receiver (it’s a Sony HT-SS2300) via an HDMI cable. There’s also a cable box hooked up to the receiver, and ALL sound is output from the receiver. The flat panel LCD (an LG 42LG50) I’ve got is used only for display, no sound. What’s crazy is across these components, there’s not a single place for me to plug in a pair of headphones, and therein lies my problem.
I have almost zero interest in online gaming, so I don’t really care much about headphones with a mic. Ideally, I’d like to be able to somehow use my over ear headpohones to listen to anything being output by the receiver. I’d be happy to settle for just the XBox if necessary, though. Can anyone here see a place in this chain or know of a product I could use to use a regular pair of headphones?
If the only answer is a pair of wired/wireless gaming headphones, I’d love a few reasonably priced suggestions. If I had to go that route, how do they hook up to the 360? Would I still be able to use HDMI to pass video from the 360 to my receiver? Is there an easy toggle to go between the headphones and the speakers?
I warned you these were noob questions. Thanks so much for any help.
I’ve had a look at the manuals for your TV and receiver, surprising that neither of them have a headphone output, but that’s what you’ve got to work with.
As far as I can tell, you have two options for getting audio. You can re rig your setup so that your TV is getting audio by connecting your Xbox directly to the TV via HDMI or you can use the component cables from your Xbox instead of HDMI and use the two RCA jacks from that. If you go for the first option, your TV can output sound via two RCA plugs in the A/V output section at the back.
The downside of option one is that you won’t be able to control all the inputs and outputs from the receiver anymore because the Xbox will be going direct to the TV, no big deal but it’ll mean using the TV remote when you want to use the Xbox.
The downside of option two is that your video will be via component rather than HDMI and you may have a loss of quality (which you may not notice.) I don’t think you can use the HDMI out from the Xbox as well as the audio from the component cable because the two sockets are too close together.
So now, whatever you’ve done, you have an audio signal but it’s unamplified and in RCA cables. You can get adapters for a couple of bucks that convert the RCAs down to 3.5mm headphone plugs BUT I’m pretty sure you’d need a small amplifier to make it all work.
A cheap option would be to get some computer speakers that have their own amplifier and a headphone output. Use the RCA to 3.5mm converter to connect the RCA audio to the computer speakers then plug your headphones into the speakers.
It won’t be pretty, but it’ll work.
Another thing to do is just browse a big electronics store, you might find something like a mini amplifier for headphones that you can use in place of the computer speakers.
Not a wrong or dumb question by the way, just a slightly unusual situation where nothing has a headphone output.
You could go the adapter route. Get yourself an RCA-to-pin converter (like this) to convert left/right coaxial audio to a single female 3.5mm stereo pin jack, then plug the headphones into those, switching the audio output on your receiver to the appropriate outputs to the headphones.
There is a near perfect solution for your problem, but it isn’t cheap. You could get some wireless headphones with an optical input. Sony make one, but it’s $150. You just plug it into the optical output of your receiver, and you can hear the Xbox, the TV or whatever .
The problem is that his receiver doesn’t have ANY audio outputs. There are no RCA outputs on the receiver. The receiver doesn’t have an optical output either. The TV does though and so does the Xbox but if he used the Xbox one he might not be able to use HDMI due to the lack of space around the HDMI output.
Ah! I didn’t realize there were no audio outputs. (What kind of receiver doesn’t have audio outputs anyway? Well, I guess that one. I just didn’t know you could get such bare-bones receivers.) Sounds like the TV is really the only way to go here.
Gukumatz- thanks for moving the thread to the correct forum. It seems to have worked. Also, the picture you linked to is exactly the back of my receiver.
I’m glad to realize that what I’m looking for is in fact as difficult as I thought. I was blown away when I realized that neither TV nor receiver had any audio outputs. What’s crazy is that the receiver actually has a 3.5MM jack on the front that you plug a mic into to calibrate the speakers. One more tiny little jack would have been really nice.
I was going for affordable with decent reviews, so I guess that’s what I get. No biggie, just a bit of a head-scratcher in this day and age.
Thanks all, especially to 1920s Style “Death Ray” for the thoroughness of your answer. It’s good to have had input from a few knowledgeable people.
Probably running past the useful price point, but if you want to use headphones with home theatre and gaming, it is worth thinking about something that supports Dolby Headphone. This is a DSP based system that synthesises the head related transform function and other changes to the sound, and recreates the aural clues that the brain uses to detect ambient information. It is remarkably good. Despite what you might imagine, it really can reproduce the sense of space and forward to back directional information from a 5.1 input into only 2 drivers in the earphones. Since these a DSP based solutions they are almost always fed with digital anyway. A good example is the Pioneer SE-DIR800C.
