Headphone Compatibility

[hoobs88]

The Situation: I play DrumMania a lot. Sometimes while playing, the sound of drumsticks hitting the pads is louder than the music (especially when getting to intense sections of the song). I think headphones would solve this problem. However, the Japanese Slimline Playstation 2 is not equipped with a headphone jack. Similarly, I would like to be able to use headphones on my Nintendo Wii. Hopefully, this post will kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

Possible Solutions:
1. Plug the Red/White Composite Audio output cables into a Receiver with headphone jack.
Problem- I do not have a Receiver 
2. USB wireless headphones
3. Connecting the Audio outputs to couplers then to headphones
Problem- Not sure what other cable(s) is/are necessary. I would think it would be a female to female stereo mini jack but don't know if those even exist.
4. Fill in your own if you have an idea, suggestion, or recommendation.

Tested:
I have USB wireless headphones that when plugged into my computer, the blue LED light on the transmitter flashes when music is playing. When plugged into the PS2 USB port, the blue LED light remains on but no music comes through. I think the USB ports on the system might only be for inputs. Can anyone confirm this?

Untested:
There are 2 USB ports on the system so I was thinking that maybe I could connect the other one to a computer and perhaps adding the transmitter as hardware might work.

Questions:
1. Has anyone tried using USB wireless headphones on a PS2?
2. Has anyone successfully gotten headphones to work on a video game system not equipped with a headphone jack?

Any advice, insight, or suggestions in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Necromancer]

I think that USB headphones only work if the game supports it (generally only when chatting with other peeps), so you'll need to tap the audio out jacks.  To connect to both the television and the headphones, you'll need a pair of y-adapters for the rca jacks, a rca to 3.5mm stereo plug adapter, and likely a 3.5mm stereo plug coupler (unless you can find an adapter that has a female 3.5mm plug).  Make sure you get headphones with built in volume control, else you won't be able to adjust the volume.

Alternatively, you could forgo the y-adapters and tap your television's audio out jack.  This would let you adjust the volume via the television (as long as the output is set to variable), but you'd have to disable the internal speakers if you want headphones only.  That's easy enough to do (via menus), but it'd be a pain in the butt if you needed to switch back and forth on a regular basis.

[hoobs88]

I found some answers to the questions after investigating online. The PS2 USB ports do not support USB wireless headphones. I managed to find a Sony Wireless Headphone that allows you to plug the Red/White outputs from the PS2 into the Sony Transmitter.

One of my co-workers had an interesting idea that I never thought of. He wanted to connect the audio outputs of the PS2 via Y cable and 3.5mm plug into the computer using it as a makeshift Receiver then plugging the USB transmitter into the computer and the wireless headphones should be able to work under that setup.

Thanks for your input Necro.

[Duo_R]

Hoobs,

Sorry for the late response. For the Duo-R setup get a plug like this from monoprice:




http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021804&p_id=666&seq=1&format=2


Plug the 3.5 part into the custom Sansui I built you:




then plug the Red/White RCA's from your Duo-R into the adapter you bought from monoprice. And best part is you already have the volume control adapter, so you should be set!


Duo-R

[hoobs88]

I still have yet to try the configuration that my co-worker suggested for the USB wireless headphones but the Sony wireless headphones are working quite well. If I plug the PS2 AV cable into my VCR then plug the VCR output into the Sony transmitter, I can get sound from the TV as well as the headphones. Unfortunately, the VCR output is mono. The only way that I can get stereo sound is to plug the PS2 output directly into the transmitter.