Easy Solution for Buzzing Headphones on Xbox One (Like Apple Headphones)
If you’ve ever tried Apple EarPods or earbuds with your Xbox One just to get a weird buzzing noise, don’t worry – neither your controller nor your earbuds are broken. The problem here is how conventional headphone jacks are built and how Apple (and a few others) build their jacks. This is easy to fix.
The above video from Nick Robinson , who is actually a cool guy and a guy from Polygon, shows how easy it is to fix the problem and why it even happens. If you can’t watch, it’s easy: plug your headphones into your controller (it’s important that you do this first, otherwise the options you need to change won’t appear) and then open the Xbox One settings panel. You should see a lot of microphone settings that weren’t there before, but you want to completely mute “headset microphone” and “microphone monitoring” to zero. This should do the trick.
Ultimately the reason for this is that, unlike just about every other headphone manufacturer, Apple switched the microphone and grounding rings on the headphone plug, so the sound you hear is actually your grounding line going through the microphone. This is awful, but I can tell you that Apple is not the only one doing this – if you have headphones that are labeled “Made for iPhone” or “Made for iPod”, chances are they have their grounding and microphone rings swapped as well. This is also the reason why some combo microphone / headphones work with iOS devices, for example, and not with Android devices.
Either way, hopefully this fix saves you spending money on certain Xbox One headsets, and while you won’t be able to use the built-in microphone, you should be able to enjoy audio without that annoying noise. Like Nick’s video and it will help this quick and easy fix to be at the top of YouTube search results when they are looking for a solution to this all too common problem.
How to Use Apple Headphones on Xbox One (NOISE SOUND CORRECTION) | Nick Robinson (YouTube)