This needs a (2017), I was so confused why this was published again, seemed so familiar.
saagarjha•Apr 19, 2026
Fixed
jpc0•Apr 19, 2026
A magnet in a coil operates both ways, this is non intuitive but perfectly sound.
Not sure if it's mentioned in the article but microphones can be speakers too...
bigbugbag•Apr 19, 2026
same with solar panels, they can be reversed to emit light.
kqr•Apr 19, 2026
What's their spectrum?
DoctorOetker•Apr 19, 2026
near infrared
d3Xt3r•Apr 19, 2026
Same with LEDs, they can be reversed to generate electricity.
docjay•Apr 19, 2026
What’s wild is that most things having to do with light, magnetism, and/or electricity are interchangeable and reversible. Put electricity through a wire and it’ll create a magnetic field, or wave a magnetic field near a wire and it’ll create electricity. That means that putting electricity into an LED creates light and a magnetic field, or putting light into the LED creates electricity and a magnetic field, or waving a magnetic field near it will create electricity in the wires and light from the LED. Granted for that last one you’ll need a spinning magnetar nearby, or just add some more wire to the LED and it becomes a kitchen counter experiment.
Same interchangeability with solar panels, transformers, thermoelectric devices, etc. The effect might be big or small, depending on the setup, but the physics is happening either way.
I’ve spent time lost in space thinking about how much stuff is really just a copper wire in various configurations.
Have a copper wire - it’s an antenna, magnet, inductor, fuse, thermometer, heater, and strain gauge.
Put another copper wire near it - it’s a capacitor.
Curl one more than the other - it’s a transformer.
Put iron on it - it’s a thermocouple.
Put electricity through it - it’s a peltier cooler.
Add salt water - it’s a battery.
Put electricity through it - the iron is now a permanent magnet.
Wave the permanent magnet near it - it’s a generator and a microphone.
Put electricity through it again - it’s a motor and a speaker.
Heat it up and it’ll make Cuprous Oxide - it’s a solar panel and a diode.
Put electricity into it - it’s an LED.
userbinator•Apr 19, 2026
Not sure if it's mentioned in the article but microphones can be speakers too...
Only dynamic mics, which are relatively rare and seldom encountered without an attached preamp. The vast majority of mics for PCs are condensers and electrets.
Anything can be a speaker, briefly and only once, if you apply enough voltage to it...
atoav•Apr 19, 2026
Huh? The standard stage mic, the Shure SM58, certainly is dynamic and has no preamp.
But you probsbly think about smaller form mics like found on headsets (Electrets).
userbinator•Apr 19, 2026
Yes. I don't think many PCs would have a stage mic plugged into them.
Anechoic•Apr 19, 2026
* The vast majority of mics for PCs are condensers and electrets.*
These can be run in reverse as well, it requires CB custom electronics so it’s not something a lay person can do out of the box.
analog31•Apr 19, 2026
I think you have this backwards. Condensers and electrets (a form of condenser with a permanent charge on one terminal) almost always have a built-in preamp. The reason is that they cannot drive a capacitive load of any magnitude, and their outputs must be buffered before being fed to any wiring.
Like another post mentioned, dynamic mics like the Shure SM58 mentioned here, can drive a cable directly or through a small built-in transformer. They're still used in live sound, though condensers have become quite common there too. Condensers still tend to have somewhat better behavior, such as signal-to-noise, than electrets.
Of course everything has to be amplified or fed to a digitizer at some point. The issue is where the preamp needs to be physically located.
akoboldfrying•Apr 19, 2026
> perfectly sound.
I hear what you did there
yen223•Apr 19, 2026
I recall when I was a kid decades ago, being able to plug a speaker directly into the microphone jack and use it as a microphone, without any modifications whatsoever.
We could do the reverse too, plug a microphone into the speaker jack and hear sounds coming out from it.
dickfickling•Apr 19, 2026
I have vague memories of iPod Linux (or Rockbox, I can’t remember) having a feature where you could record voice notes using your regular headphones using the same technique
m4lvin•Apr 19, 2026
Okay, but how do I use this as a replacement when the mic is not working on Linux?
GlumWoodpecker•Apr 19, 2026
You can use the `hdajackretask` program in the `alsa-tools` package to retask your jacks.
Not all speakers work well as dynamic mics; and in fact turning on mic mode may enable the bias voltage, which could either burn out the voice coil or hold the diaphragm against the stop, making it even less likely to pick up any sound.
Jack retasking, although documented in applicable technical specifications, is not well-known, as was mentioned by the Linux audio developer
This could be a "bubble effect"; the Realtek codecs mentioned have a Windows utility to configure the jacks, which countless otherwise non-technical users would've seen and interacted with, so awareness of this feature is probably higher than they think. Fun fact: the "ALC" prefix in their codec names stands for Avance Logic, which was acquired by Realtek and they just kept that prefix well into the HD Audio era.
villgax•Apr 19, 2026
If this or an accelerometer based recording is what Meta uses to eavesdrop on in-person talk then color me pink
murderfs•Apr 19, 2026
It's pretty unlikely that Meta is actually eavesdropping on your conversations, because it'd be immediately obvious from battery usage. The ability to turn speakers into microphones doesn't help if the speakers aren't actually connected to an ADC, and both of the modern smartphone OSes limit you to on the order of hundreds of samples per second, so it's rather difficult to get anything sensible without either doing a bunch of local analysis or exfiltrating it, both of which would be visible.
slow_typist•Apr 19, 2026
It can be done with neural networks [1]. Also, speech doesn’t need much bandwidth to be intelligible. You would need control of the analog filter between the accelerometer and the ADC. With 250/s acceleration samples you can reconstruct a signal of a bandwidth of more than 100 Hz anywhere in the spectrum. That is called undersampling.
To really take it to that next level, snap the headphones in half when you get up on stage for a lollipop. Even seen one bring a corded phone and cradle to a set.
AmmarSaleh50•Apr 19, 2026
don't let the CIA see this one
Se_ba•Apr 19, 2026
Tbh it's crazy that you can do it in some of the microwaves
rf15•Apr 19, 2026
As a kid I accidently plugged a mic into the speaker port and was surprised that, when I put my ear close to the mic, I could hear the computer sounds! It made sense in hindsight, and since then I knew they are kind of functionally equivalent.
fipar•Apr 19, 2026
My first “electric guitar” as a kid was my acoustic with an earphone taped to the bridge and plugged to the mic in of my boom box.
It was also my first “fuzz pedal” because the sound never came out clean :)
VladVladikoff•Apr 19, 2026
When I was a teenager I was friends with an extremely poor kid who literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks. He couldn’t afford a microphone and used an old pair of busted headphones to rap into as a microphone. He had recorded and produced a whole album like this with Fruity Loops on an old computer he found discarded at the side of the road.
gfiorav•Apr 19, 2026
what happened to him?
nullsanity•Apr 19, 2026
What do you think? He was poor in America, so he stayed poor in America. 99.999% of stories about people in hopeless poverty end with them in hopeless poverty. To expect otherwise is ludicrous.
Evidlo•Apr 19, 2026
Wow, what are the odds you were friends with him too!
IncreasePosts•Apr 19, 2026
He ended up producing a documentary you can watch, called 7 Mile.
metrix•Apr 19, 2026
So authoritative!
You had me for a second :)
QuercusMax•Apr 19, 2026
My little brother and I did this with an old Panasonic tape recorder. We were in elementary school so it wasn't very good, but it got my brother into music production.
nailer•Apr 19, 2026
Vault 7 from wikileaks confirmed that yes, the CIA is using this.
Anechoic•Apr 19, 2026
This is how drive-thru kiosks work (principal, not the specific implementation).
Source: I used to measure the “microphone” frequency response for a kiosk OEM.
angg•Apr 19, 2026
This comment caught me off guard and I couldn't believe this to possibly be true but as it turns out, yes, drive-thru speakers used the *literal same physical membrane* to act as both the speaker and microphone, and this was apparently widely commonpractice as recently as the 90s.
And they literally just used off the shelf, bog standard stereo speakers to use as a mic. Insane.
Given that such a mic would be several feet from the driver and poor audio quality could directly result in daily lost revenue for this business that sees revenue 100x to 1000x more than even high end audio equipment during this time period every month, I would've assumed they would've at least used a special membrane or more optimal type of speaker, but apparently not.
Sidenote: Obviously I used an LLM to research this (not to write, this is all certified organic human-generated text), and I just gotta say, isn't it absolutely delightful to be able to satisfy such random, obtuse curiosities like this one on a whim? This kind of question would've normally required a fair bit of googling to confidently validate, to the point I most likely wouldn't have even attempted to do so.
userbinator•Apr 19, 2026
Many intercom systems and walkie-talkies do the same. The downside is they're half-duplex.
riobard•Apr 19, 2026
why is jack retasking a thing…
adrianmonk•Apr 19, 2026
Chips only have a certain number of pins. It probably works out better economically if those pins can be used for either input or output. Chip manufacturers can thus make one product that will fit the needs of more customers instead of (say) 9 different chip variants with 8 inputs and 0 outputs, 7 inputs and 1 output, 6 inputs and 2 outputs, etc.
It could also be useful to the end user. Motherboards have a limited number of ports since the connectors cost money and take up space on the back panel. One user might want a line input (for digitizing old cassettes, for example)[1] and another user might want an extra surround sound output (for 7.1 surround sound instead of just 5.1 surround). With retasking, the motherboard can support both these niche use cases with a single shared port.
---
[1] You can't use a microphone input for this because (a) it's mono and (b) it's a different voltage level.
analog31•Apr 19, 2026
A fun fact is that the ability of a single transducer to function as both a speaker and a microphone is the basis for establishing an absolute measurement of sound pressure.
Similarly most leds are photo diodes, electric motors can be used to generate current, Peltier cells can be used to generate current, and so so forth. Many of such physical processes are invertible.
jimmydddd•Apr 19, 2026
Yes. Mostly the same basic components--Just optimized for which direction you are going in. I recall using an single in ear speaker as a microphone as one of the experiments in my Radio Shack 101 eperiments electronics kit.
anonymousiam•Apr 19, 2026
While staying in a high-end D.C. area hotel, I once discovered a hidden hard-wired speaker under the bathroom sink. Somebody had written "F.B.I." on it with nail polish.
I already knew that speakers could be used as microphones, and it occurred to me that putting a speaker in a hotel room in the name of "safety" would be a great cover story for a surveillance operation.
jnellis•Apr 19, 2026
When I did commercial fishing in Alaska, often the boats just had two speakers, one in the wheel house and one on the deck (long liner). You just talked into/toward the speaker.
jedbrooke•Apr 19, 2026
Fun fact, an electric guitar can also be used as a microphone if you shout in to it loud enough.
We discovered this while fooling around with some guitars and such as teenagers. We had a 4 track input device that was separating vocals and instruments, but even after turning down the vocal track, we could still hear it in the instrument track. We then of course followed it up with some experiments deliberately shouting into the guitar and enjoying the distorted recordings that came out of it
olelele•Apr 19, 2026
A big speaker element is useful for micing kick drums.
ssttoo•Apr 19, 2026
It was so popular in studios to use an old Yamaha ns10 speaker as a kick (bass) drum mic that now Yamaha started making and selling an “official” version.
I used my moms Koss headphones as a microphone on her old stereo and used it to broadcast cast my teenage stupidity to the whole house.
DoctorOetker•Apr 19, 2026
not only can electromagnet voice coils (speakers or microphones), be used as either a speaker or a microphone (transducer), they can even be used as both at the same time using a DC-coupled circulator / isolator:
That's all true. As a kid I was watching with sister a children's show in TV. The actor on the screen asked a question followed by silence. My sister yelled the answer at the TV, then the actor said something like "you're right kid". I was flabbergasted.
p1mrx•Apr 19, 2026
Dora the Informer.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS•Apr 19, 2026
This also works during televized sporting events. The refs can indeed hear you, but you have to yell pretty loud.
f055•Apr 19, 2026
As a kid behind the Iron Curtain I had a radio & cassette tape player with a single large speaker built-in. The cassette player had a record button that when pressed together with play used the speaker and I could actually record my voice, and play it back, from the tape. After enough re-recording on a single tape the fade of the old recordings broke through the new ones creating a truly amazing sound experience. Too bad I lost the tapes and the device.
25 Comments
Not sure if it's mentioned in the article but microphones can be speakers too...
Same interchangeability with solar panels, transformers, thermoelectric devices, etc. The effect might be big or small, depending on the setup, but the physics is happening either way.
I’ve spent time lost in space thinking about how much stuff is really just a copper wire in various configurations.
Have a copper wire - it’s an antenna, magnet, inductor, fuse, thermometer, heater, and strain gauge.
Put another copper wire near it - it’s a capacitor.
Curl one more than the other - it’s a transformer.
Put iron on it - it’s a thermocouple.
Put electricity through it - it’s a peltier cooler.
Add salt water - it’s a battery.
Put electricity through it - the iron is now a permanent magnet.
Wave the permanent magnet near it - it’s a generator and a microphone.
Put electricity through it again - it’s a motor and a speaker.
Heat it up and it’ll make Cuprous Oxide - it’s a solar panel and a diode.
Put electricity into it - it’s an LED.
Only dynamic mics, which are relatively rare and seldom encountered without an attached preamp. The vast majority of mics for PCs are condensers and electrets.
Anything can be a speaker, briefly and only once, if you apply enough voltage to it...
But you probsbly think about smaller form mics like found on headsets (Electrets).
These can be run in reverse as well, it requires CB custom electronics so it’s not something a lay person can do out of the box.
Like another post mentioned, dynamic mics like the Shure SM58 mentioned here, can drive a cable directly or through a small built-in transformer. They're still used in live sound, though condensers have become quite common there too. Condensers still tend to have somewhat better behavior, such as signal-to-noise, than electrets.
Of course everything has to be amplified or fed to a digitizer at some point. The issue is where the preamp needs to be physically located.
I hear what you did there
We could do the reverse too, plug a microphone into the speaker jack and hear sounds coming out from it.
https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-tools/tree/master/hdaja...
Jack retasking, although documented in applicable technical specifications, is not well-known, as was mentioned by the Linux audio developer
This could be a "bubble effect"; the Realtek codecs mentioned have a Windows utility to configure the jacks, which countless otherwise non-technical users would've seen and interacted with, so awareness of this feature is probably higher than they think. Fun fact: the "ALC" prefix in their codec names stands for Avance Logic, which was acquired by Realtek and they just kept that prefix well into the HD Audio era.
[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3478102
To really take it to that next level, snap the headphones in half when you get up on stage for a lollipop. Even seen one bring a corded phone and cradle to a set.
It was also my first “fuzz pedal” because the sound never came out clean :)
You had me for a second :)
Source: I used to measure the “microphone” frequency response for a kiosk OEM.
And they literally just used off the shelf, bog standard stereo speakers to use as a mic. Insane.
Given that such a mic would be several feet from the driver and poor audio quality could directly result in daily lost revenue for this business that sees revenue 100x to 1000x more than even high end audio equipment during this time period every month, I would've assumed they would've at least used a special membrane or more optimal type of speaker, but apparently not.
Sidenote: Obviously I used an LLM to research this (not to write, this is all certified organic human-generated text), and I just gotta say, isn't it absolutely delightful to be able to satisfy such random, obtuse curiosities like this one on a whim? This kind of question would've normally required a fair bit of googling to confidently validate, to the point I most likely wouldn't have even attempted to do so.
It could also be useful to the end user. Motherboards have a limited number of ports since the connectors cost money and take up space on the back panel. One user might want a line input (for digitizing old cassettes, for example)[1] and another user might want an extra surround sound output (for 7.1 surround sound instead of just 5.1 surround). With retasking, the motherboard can support both these niche use cases with a single shared port.
---
[1] You can't use a microphone input for this because (a) it's mono and (b) it's a different voltage level.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/25/jresv25n5p489_A1b....
I already knew that speakers could be used as microphones, and it occurred to me that putting a speaker in a hotel room in the name of "safety" would be a great cover story for a surveillance operation.
We discovered this while fooling around with some guitars and such as teenagers. We had a 4 track input device that was separating vocals and instruments, but even after turning down the vocal track, we could still hear it in the instrument track. We then of course followed it up with some experiments deliberately shouting into the guitar and enjoying the distorted recordings that came out of it
I personally used a toy guitar amp for this purpose https://music.stoyanstefanov.com/2017/03/30/diy-sub-kick-mic...
[1] https://bobbyowsinskiblog.com/build-subkick/
https://techlib.com/files/rfdesign3.pdf