Audio Cable Confusion

renditionkid

Member
Dec 9, 2002
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I own an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard revision 1.04 which has the standard Intel connectors for front audio ports on the board. My V770K case has two front audio ports, the Mic and Line-In, or headphone port. Despite having only two ports it has cabling for all three standard audio ports. The Mic is easy to setup, but the Line-In and Line-Out cables are labled only as FrontLeft/RearLeft and FrontRight/RearRight. Which cable is for the Line-In port and which is for the Line-Out? Would the FrontRight/RearRight be for the Line-In, or would the FrontLeft/RearLeft be for the Line-In? :confused:
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Well, that's the oddest configuration of ports I can imagine. No speaker system is configured with one cable accepting the two left channels and the other cable carrying the right channels. The normal setup is for the 2 front channels from one connector, and two rear channels from the other. This could just be bad labelling from an Asian manufacturer with a bad translator, though. If you tried to send two left channels to a port, with the speaker expecting two front channels, you'd end up with the rear left playing on the front right speaker.

Look and find out if you can see which physical port each bundle of cables go to (you may need to take off the front cover). I'm betting the MIC port is shared between the MIC cables as well as one of the other sets. That way you can use the shared port as either a MIC or a line-in port, or possibly as a 2 channel rear audio connector if you had such a board. There's really no way to know which one of those is which without looking at it, or plugging in and testing.

The A7N8X Deluxe only has pins for Line Out left and Line Out right anyway. Plug one set of the "left" or "right" cables in, without the MIC wires connected so you don't blow it out. Test for sound using only 2 channel output in each socket. If you get sound, then you've plugged in the front channel cables. You can plug the MIC in then. If you don't get sound, then you've plugged in the rear channel or Line In cables, and that port should be set up as the MIC port, and the other one is the Line Out.