Computers & Networking

[TBryant22]

What kind of cable would I need to buy in order to play my PC through my stereo system? Thanks for the help and advice and your time.

[RedWyv3 Best Buy Employee]

Hosa Technology 3.5mm TRS-to-Dual RCA Cable

Model: CMR-210 | SKU: 8912144

Connect your MP3 player to a hi-fi receiver with this specialty Y cable and rock out to your favorite music.

 5 Read reviews (4)

Sale: $9.99

From your computer speaker jack to the input jack of your stereo (red and white). Select on your stereo the input (for instance, if you put the red and white on 'AUX1', you'd select 'AUX1' on your stereo). If your stereo has no inputs in the back, you'll need to use a different device (such as an FM modulator). Most stereo systems, even cheap ones, do, however.

[Neihn Valued Contributor]

What Jake linked will give you audio through your receiver but if you want to have features such as Surround sound or EAX effects you will need a different setup. If you want surround sound and EAX effects in games you would need something along the lines of:

1. Home Receiver with 3 analog surround sound inputs and a capable surround sound sound card such as the Creative X-Fi series. Although any card with 3 analog surround outs will work.

2. Home Receiver with Optical Input and a device such as the Creative Home Theater Connect  DTS-610 kit (still need a sound card with 3 analog surround outs).

3. Home Receiver with Optical Input and a Sound card with built in optical out such as the Creative X-Fi Titanium and X-Fi Titanium Fatality series. 

Method 3 is the one I use with a X-Fi Titanium Fatality (the titanium series are PCI express cards). This has produced excellent results for me and superb audio. EAX works (with Alchemy of course) great and surround sound through movies is fantastic.

[RedWyv3 Best Buy Employee]

-blink blink-

I just assume since he didn't mentioned his *massively awesome* sound card, that he had a regular headphone out jack on his machine and nothing else. You know, the intergrated chip.

[Neihn Valued Contributor]

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JakeTalahan wrote:

-blink blink-

I just assume since he didn't mentioned his *massively awesome* sound card, that he had a regular headphone out jack on his machine and nothing else. You know, the intergrated chip.

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I know I just included that incase he was looking for something else. You are most likely correct in what the OP is wanting but I wanted to include that if they were wanting surround sound, EAX effects or essentially anything with multi-channel audio they would need a different solution. Was just providing additional options is all.

[RedWyv3 Best Buy Employee]

I know, I was only teasing you. 

I have him a quick and simple answer and you go off and give him this big, complex answer. You went and put me to shame!

[TBryant22]

Thanks for all the replies, it helped a ton. Yea I just have a basic integrated sound chip on my PC, but the speakers are ancient, honestly suprised they still work, but I have a new(er) stero with pretty good speakers for what I want, so I just needed to know if a simple in/out cable was needed or a more sophisticated setup.

[RedWyv3 Best Buy Employee]

Well, for a specific answer to understand the underlying technology..

3.5mm cable end (also known as a 1.8th in) is the same as a headphone jack. It's what you use to hook up your computer, and consists of..

(2) positive wires and (2) negetive wires, designated left and right channels. There is no difference between the two other then their assignment.

An Red/White cable has the exact same configuration, red being right and white being left. They have phono, (also known as RCA) ends. The EXACT same signal is used as is used with the 3.5mm.

The ONLY difference is that the 3.5 is a single end with one designated side on the top and the other designated side lower on the connector, while the RCA style connector seperates the two. 

You could even 'bare' the wire on the 3.5mm stereo connector and solder the positive/negetive wires to the stereo's board, if you were technically inclined and felt like going through all that effort. It would work fine - just, why would you bother? A cheap little cord like the one above would work just fine.

So why did I post this information? I don't know - it's irrelevant - I just felt my first reply was insufficent  

[Neihn Valued Contributor]

It is basically if you dont care about Multi-channel surround sound a simple cable like Jake linked would work. But if you want multi-channel surround sound (ie more then just the left and right) You would need a more sophisticated setup.

Jakes 3.5mm to RCA = Stereo Sound (Left/Right)

My Options = Multi-Channel surround sound (5.1, 7.1, Dolby Digital/DTS, etc.)

But if you have a basic integrated sound and a "ancient" receiver it would most likely be best to just go with Jakes recommendation.

[Entropy]

BTW, if you have a home theater surround receiver (one that supports Dolby Digital), and your sound card has an optical audio output.  (Even a lot of basic integrated ones have support for optical or coaxial audio output these days, although many laptops require an adapter to support this that is specific to the laptop) and you only want surround from DVDs and just stereo from games, all you need is an optical (TOSLINK) or coaxial (Single RCA connector, but usually requiring an adapter on the PC end) digital audio cable from the PC to the surround receiver.