Can I hook a 3.5mm jack to the USB ports on the Xbox 360 to receive sound?
Would it be possible, with some type of wiring, to hook a 3.5mm jack to the USB ports on the Xbox and receive in-game sound?
56 Answers
No
A headphone connected through a 3.5mm jack is expecting an analog signal. The USB port sends a digital signal and needs to talk through the USB protocol. As mentioned on a different answer, a few companies make converters to handle this for you. I'm also partial to Turtle Beach.
How about picking up a cable like this Xbox 360 VGA HD AV Cable and an RCA to 3.5mm adapter for the audio?
2Creative Labs recently release the first commercial external sound card for all 3 major consoles called Recon3D. It is very expensive at over $100 USD, but it is packed full of technology to improve the sound output. It is a very good solution but damn it's expensive.
1If you want to use a head set for game audio, USB isn't the way to go. I'm pretty sure the Xbox 360 doesn't support audio over USB, only via the ports on the back.
There are a variety of third party headsets on the market that handle both in-game audio and voice chat over Xbox Live. I'm partial to Turtle Beach, but there are other great ones out there as well. Most have setup instructions for hooking the headset directly to the console, or through the TV/receiver.
If your TV/stereo/entertainment system (or whatever you have set up to play the XBox' audio through speakers) also has RCA out, like mine does, you can hook up your headphones to that with an RCA/minijack adaptor. It works great for late-night gaming when you don't want to wake the neighbours.
That worked for me :)
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