Are there audio cable splitters/"uniters" that allow two devices to play on one set of speakers simultaneously?

crawlkill

Estimable
Aug 12, 2014
1
0
4,510
Hiya, internet,

So at my desktop setup, I've got one pair of speakers--traditional audio jack speakers, no USB weirdness (does that even exist?). I often find myself switching back and forth between background listening (you Earth humans would say "music," although it tends to be podcasts or audiobooks with me) through the PC and my phone, depending on how much I need to be up and around.

It's easy enough to swap back and forth between the PC's audio jack (thank you, extension audio cable...) and my phone's jack, but there are times (ie, "need to listen for Skype alerts for work") when it would be very convenient to be able to route both my phone and my computer's audio through the speakers--ideally by way of the jack, not a software solution, because sometimes it's YouTube on the phone providing my background noise.

I did some googling, but without any vocabulary under my belt, it's tricky. There doesn't seem to be any such thing as an "audio cable Y-joiner," and for all I know such a thing is impossible or impractical with the way speakers work (I mean, there'd need to be some processing going on so that the sounds didn't step on one another, wouldn't there, to get two distinct signals conjoined...? I know absolutely nothing about audio engineering). But! I figure it doesn't hurt to ask. Hopefully.

Edit: It looks like what I want is an audio switch(er)! Amazon's got a bunch but it looks like some are A/V switchers, and some are binary, rather than uniting. Anyone got an opinion?
 

ttimberlak443

Honorable
Jan 11, 2014
129
0
10,760
In theory, a standard passive splitter, or "Y" splitter, should be able to work both ways. At the end of the day, all that the splitter is, is copper wire touching. It should go in any direction since there is nothing preventing it from going in one direction.

I would head up to a Radioshack and get yourself a splitter since they are only a couple bucks and try it out. If I can find one lying around, I may try it out myself just to confirm it.