Share that Sound with a Friend with a Monster iSPlitter

Monster iSplitter 1000 Y-Splitter

You’ve certainly seen advertisements of a couple of teenage girls sharing a single set of earbuds: head-to-head, each with a single bud in one ear, big grins on both faces. Yeah, right: that’s a commercial. In reality, that doesn’t work – you need two sets of earbuds. If you want decent sound, you probably need two sets of real earphones. It’s a no-brainer.

So how do you send a single feed from a tablet, MP3 player, smartphone, or other device to two sets of ears? Simple: a Monster iSplitter 1000. The lower-case i notwithstanding, it’s actually a pretty useful little device. I say “little” because it’s quite small, about the size of one of those iPod shuffles: 32mm x 47mm and 11mm thick, with a 10.5-cm “tail” that terminates in a standard 3.5mm jack. For you metricphobes, that means it’s 1-1/4 x 1-7/8 inches and 1/3” thick, with a 4-inch tail. It weighs about an ounce, if you care. The iSplitter has two standard 3.5mm output jacks, which are controlled by individual volume-control sliders. The sliders go all the way from full mute to passing full volume of the input signal. This capability is handy in case two people are listening on headphones with different sensitivities or simply want to listen at different volumes.

The device is rugged, with a hard plastic (ABS) case and reinforcements on both ends of the “pigtail” cable. All connections are 24K gold-plated to reduce oxidation and keep connections sharp and crisp. 

We use ours to run two sets of headphones off a single television or MP3 player in the exercise room. The splitter also works on other devices, such as smartphones and tablets or even the output jack of an airline seat. You can plug in any kind of headphones, from cheap-o earbuds to high-end noise-cancelling headphones (done both, works fine). The sliders work, though fine adjustment is a little tricky. There’s no reduction in signal quality from plugging in two sets of phones vs. one. 

The one thing I find weird is that one output jack has an icon of a microphone and the other has the same icon with a slash – but there’s nothing about what this might mean in the documentation, either online or in the package. Otherwise, I'm all in favor of the Monster iSplitter (though it is a little pricey...)

Summary

PLUS: It works, and seems almost indestructible.
MINUS: It seems kind of expensive for something so simple.
What They're Saying: A Monster iSplitter is just what you need if you want to share music or movie audio from your mobile device.