This is a pretty simple one. Get a headset with two jacks. One is a normal phone jack, and you would use it like any other phone headset. The other one plugs into a CD player or radio or what-have-you. When the voltage in the telephone line corresponds to a non-connected phone (i.e., the phone is not in use), the headset will play what is on the CD. When the phone rings, the voltage changes, and the speaker then outputs the phone caller. There may be a need for a small computer chip to make the sound of a phone ringing, but besides that, you should be good to go.

Future enhancements (for the Mega-Ultimate Headset) would include a feedback jack to the CD player (or radio) so that the music would pause (if applicable) when the phone was in use.

I'm sure most people who have worked phones would appreciate something like this. The phones are in use about 70% of the time, but when they aren't, you wouldn't have to listen to annoying background chatter or Musak.

I think this would be fairly inexpensive to make, and is possible with existing technology.
-- pnewp, Mar 07 2001

Skullcandy (slow site) http://www.skullcandy.com/
Two years later, its baked! (Apr 03, 2003) [krelnik, Oct 17 2004]

If it's really the "ultimate" headset, it also ought to have both the big and small plugs for audio equipment so you don't have to get those annoying adapters. (And the big-to-small adapter, I think, can damage small jacks in the long run.)
-- arghblah, Mar 07 2001


How about a phone with a line-out plug, a line-in plug for the mic, plus some digital lines that tell if the phone is in use, and one to pulse to answer/hang up, plus an integerfull for the phone number to dial. The wiring to the other audio equipment would be handeled as needed by separate circuits, either bought or homemade.
-- badoingdoing, Mar 08 2001


It seems to me this should be bakeable, and possibly even sellable. Build a gadget that senses the voltage on the phone line as pnewp suggests, and controls your stereo with an IR transmitter (imitating the remote; obviously this only works if your stereo has a remote). Add an audio switch, or (better) feed the phone audio into an aux input of the stereo, and have the gadget switch to/from that input as well as pausing the music. A PIC and a handful of parts should do it.
-- wiml, Mar 08 2001


And, of course, the Ultimate Headset would sense danger and turn the sound off or down allowing you to being able to react to outside events.
-- Aristotle, Mar 08 2001


A similar sort of thing is baked - my Sony car stereo has an input port for a hands-free cellphone, and it mutes the stereo when the phone rings.
-- angel, Apr 24 2001


Why not just have one connecter for a group of audio devices, say a mini USB jack. Then, you can plug the headset into anything.

In addition, one device should (and in some examples, already does) preform all the functions you want. A phone that is also a PDA (and hence MP3 player). Then, you wouldn't need to create headphones with multiple jacks for everything you could possible need, just one device, with one jack.

K.I.S.S.
-- eion, Apr 03 2003



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