Today I'm going to show you how to use an external microphone on your Macbook Pro.
I'm sure you probably tried this and you didn't get it to work so I'm going to show you how
I got mine to work with my Macbook.
So the microphone I'm using is this super cheap computer microphone that has a 3.5mm
plug on the end of it.
Now here's where the real problem comes in.
On the Macbook there's only one port on the side and it's labelled for a headphone input.
Now most people don't know what to do about this because most computers have a headphone
output and a microphone input as separate ports.
But on the Macbook there's only one port.
So I'm going to show you how to easily make your microphone work with your Macbook that
only has one port on the side.
You will need to buy an accessory to plug your microphone into.
I got this thing it's a Startech headphone and microphone adapter cable.
It's really cheap I got it on Amazon for seven dollars and you will need this to be able
to plug in your analog microphone that has a 3.5mm jack on it.
Now let's get a closer look at this cable and see why we need this.
So this is kinda like a standard Y-splitter but actually it not really standard.
If you look on this end it's got different imprints on here.
I don't know if you can see that.
This one has a headphone symbol on there and this one has a microphone symbol on there.
So obviously you'll plug in your microphone in here and if you want a headset, you can
plug a headset into here.
And then this end goes into your computer.
One of the major differences in the 3.5mm jack end of this is the end of my microphone
it's got only three sections here.
This is called a TRS connector.
And if you take a look at the splitter this one has four different contact points on here.
And this is called a TRRS type connector.
And it allows you to split the wiring inside to the separate headphone and microphone jacks
right here on this end.
So with this cheap adapter all you have to do is plug in your microphone into the microphone
end of the adapter.
And now just plug the end of the adapter into the Macbook.
And let's try it out with one of my recording programs here.
I'm just going to go ahead and do a quick test here.
I'm going to hit the record button and see what happens.
Ok so it's recording.
And as you can see it's picking up levels from my voice here.
But that's because the external microphone is pretty close to me.
I'll move it a little further away.
Ok, and then the built-in microphone is right here above the ESC key.
And if I tap on it you won't see any levels popping up on there.
And to show you that the external microphone works I'm going to go ahead and tap on it
in just a second so you can see that the levels are coming from the external microphone.
But if I switch sides over here I'll show you that I've got the microphone plugged in
but I'm going to tap on the built-in microphone and you can see that it is disabled.
It is not recording any sound from here.
I'll stop talking for a second so you can see.
So this is a really simple solution to the problem of using an external microphone on
a Macbook.
As you can see I just used a simple seven dollar adapter.
It's a TRRS microphone splitter with headphone jack and microphone jack built in that I found
on Amazon for only seven dollars and it really works with the Macbook Pro.
One thing I read on the reviews and comments is that some people couldn't get this adapter
to work just by plugging in the microphone.
So some of them had to plug in their headset on the other side of the port as well.
But in my example here I'm just using the microphone side of the splitter and it seems
to be working just fine with my Macbook.
Now when you plug in your headset jack here, basically you're building an entire assembly
with the headphones and microphone and talk and listen at the same time.
Now when you do that you're building exactly one of these.
This is a headphone microphone combination that comes with iPhones.
Let me show you a closer look at this.
So on the volume controls of the iPhone earbuds, you'll see the volume controls here but on
the other side that tiny dot you see is the microphone.
So basically this little set up is the same thing we built with the adapter with the separate
headphone and microphone.
But on the set of iPhone earbuds it's all built in.
So this is what the end of the iPhone earbuds looks like.
It's also a TRRS type connector.
If you compare that with the adapter I bought you'll see that they are the same.
They're both TRRS type connectors.
They have four contact points on the plug itself.
So if you really need to use a microphone on your Macbook and you didn't have that TRRS
adapter, you could use your iPhone earbuds temporarily or maybe permanently and use the
microphone on that for your Macbook.
It works just fine!
Almost exactly the same way that I showed you with that adapter with separate microphone
and headset.
So I'll give you one final demonstration here.
I've got my iPhone earbuds plugged in and I'm going to tap on the built-in microphone
and I'll show you that it is disabled with that plugged in.
And now I'll pick up the microphone end of the earbuds right here.
Let's go ahead and tap on this.
So the earbuds work just fine with the Macbook as a microphone.
If you have one of these lying around you wouldn't have to buy the adapter.
But with the adapter you do have the option of using nicer microphones you may have lying
around.
If you get the adapter, again it's a TRRS type adapter.
It's really cheap and it's really one of the easiest ways to get a 3.5mm microphone to
work with your Macbook.
There's a link in the description for the adapter that I'm using here in this video
in case you want to try the same one with your Macbook.
So I hope you found this video useful and if you did please give me a Like on this video
and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more video updates.