How can I play computer audio into my iPhone microphone?

June 4, 2024 11:12 PM

After learning I could customize the Waze voice directly, it became clear what I wanted mine to sound like. But I'm running into some difficulty getting the audio in directly.

The Waze interface lets you record with the mic, but not upload files. Clearly, I can always fall back on playing sounds through speakers and holding up the mic, but I'd like to avoid the loss in quality if I can.

It seems like what I want is minijack cable that just connects the speaker rings of the computer's headphone out to the mic ring of the table I plug into the iPhone, but I'm not able to find that (or just don't know what to call it). Or maybe there's a better solution: I'm open to ideas so…

posted by Cogito to Technology (3 answers total)

Response by poster: BTW, I just found Uploading MP3 Files to Waze's Custom Voice Navigation Feature Without a Smartphone, but I think the hassle of that approach is more than I'm willing to deal with. Seems like connecting a speaker to a mic should be fairly simple, no?
posted by Cogito at 11:23 PM on June 4

They talk about headphone and headset jacks in terms of tip, ring and shield, so stereo headphones are tip, ring and shield for the left, right and return, while headsets with a microphone have two ring connectors and can be either left/right/shield/microphone or left/right/microphone/shield. The first is the variant Apple chose, known as CTIA, while the second is OMTP and legally managed as the standard in China.

You might wire up a custom cable to connect one of the left or right channels to the microphone, but expect to use very low volumes to avoid buzzy overdriven recording.

I suspect you could cut the need for the cable by doing the audio recording in Audacity on the host PC and uploading the MP3's.
posted by k3ninho at 12:42 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In addition to hitting the right ring, you need an attenuator to bring the line level signal down to mic level. This adapter should do it all for you. Best to send it as a mono signal since the mic is mono. If you send it stereo, only left will come through. Btw, I looked into this stuff before so I knew products like this existed, I found the item by searching /iphone trrs audio in/
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:11 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]