To avoid disturbing the household, I wanted to use a pair of earbuds to monitor with, from all the phones I've had to buy over the years, had plenty stereo earbuds. Wanting to kill background noise for myself I wanted audio to both earbuds but that was a no-go with the stero plug into the mono jack of my radios. This stereo to mono adapter does the trick, shorts the contacts and sends audio to both sides of your buds. Works a treat.