My AntiMeme guest setup.

The disadvantage
I’ve had a disadvantage getting guests on this show for the past few episodes (ep2 and ep3). My dilemma is that I don’t have a land-line, the only phone service I have is a cell-phone service. I was able to do a guest on ep2 because Medicine_Soup was in the same room with me while recording. I was able to get Dual_Parallel on ep3 because he does have a “land-line,” and he recorded the show on his end.

I thought that there has to be another way to do this. I thought maybe hooking my cell phone up to the headset and wiring that into the line in of the computer would do it. Well it did it half way, it recorded everything coming from the cell phone but not from the cell phones mic; the cell phone mic and speaker are disabled when something is plugged into the headset.

So now I need to hook an external speaker into the mix, how am I going to do that? I thought maybe I would just use one of those audio splitters, that are usually used to take one input and divide it into two outputs. I thought I would try that device with two inputs and one output (cell phone and mic going into one line in). This was a failure as well. So at this point, I figured I would just figure out how all this crap worked and make my own system.

I didn’t want to go into a huge budget and wanted to make a solution with really cheep equipment. Here is a list of the stuff needed to make a working solution:

Materials
(If you don’t have a 2.5 plug and 2.5 audio patch cable; my situation)
2 3.5 audio patch cables
1 Mic
1 2.5 to 3.5 audio converter (2.5 male 3.5 female)
3 3.5 audio plugs
1 breadboard
Some spare wire


Or (if you don’t can’t find a 2.5 to 3.5 audio converter)

1 3.5 audio patch cable
1 2.5 audio patch cable
1 Mic
2 3.5 audio plugs
1 2.5 audio plug
1 breadboard
Some spare wire

Depending on the orientation of the audio plugs: possibly some extra wire, soldering iron, solder, and possibly some flux.
Pictorial explanation of each plug
The “normal” audio plug:


The microphone plug:


The headset plug:


I had to figure out a way to bridge all the plugs together without having certain lines interfering with each other.
“Schematic”


However, I have found that I get a louder signal when I bridge channel 1 and 2 on the output end. Schematic is as follows:



Here is a picture of the actual circuit I use, it is still on a prototype breadboard. I don't think I will spring for a purchase of actual PCB for now, I may later though, it may increase the quality of sound. It still sounds much better than my voice in Ep3 either way around though. This picture has another component that isn't in the schematic, There is a POT in there (the blue component), I use it to balance the phone vs Mic volume levels:



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