How to use the microphone but not the earphones from a four pole 3.5mm plug?

Question

I recently got a new computer and I have CS:GO installed. Thing is, in order to play competitive you're basically required to have a microphone and I don't want to ask my parents because they just bought a £1000 computer. However, I have some old earphones which have a perfectly good microphone but I want to hear the sound through my speakers which are built in. My earphones only have one output wire. However when i plug it into the mic hole it nothing works but when i put it into the heaphones hole the speaker and mic work fine. If there is a way to change some settings which would fix this it will be appreciated The earphones look like this.

Answer 1

Your PC's mic connector isn't supposed to handle your "four-conductor TRRS" headphones jack.

So what you need is a splitter what looks like this.

It wouldn't be so expensive like a new mic. It will split the 4 segments jack up into two jacks: a simple mic (possibly stereo) and a stereo headphone (3 segments) one. You will need to connect the red one into your PC.

Answer 2

My guess is you have a headset connector and a mic jack, which isn't that uncommon.

Now, if you have a realtek sound codec chip - which are pretty much the more common ones around you can click on the little cogwheel at the front, and set it not to mute the game audio when its plugged in by unchecking the first box - this would let you use your headphones and speakers as once. The second option would let you set your speakers independently as a primary sound device.

YMMV with other drivers.