how to hook a Receiver to your computer

[bigdaddykane]

i just bought some infinity speakers and i want to hook them up to my computer. so the i figure the best way to do this is hook a receiver up to my soundcard and then just connect the speakers directly to the receiver. i need to know what hardware i will need to do this. or just point me to a how to link. thanks

 

[sohcrates]

It's pretty easy, and you have 2 options

1) This is the easiest...just get a 1/8 inch male jack to dual female rca converter from radio shack. Then, simply run normal RCA cables from this adapter (which plugs into your sound card out on the computer) to any auxiliary input on your receiver. Then, simply select that input on the front of the receiver, and you're good to go

2) If your soundcard has a digital (SPDIF) out..you can convert it and run it into a coaxial digital input on your receiver (assuming your receiver has digital inputs). If you do it this way, and enable digital out on the sound card, you will get better quality than using method #1 above. If you're sure you have both a digital out on your soundcard and a coaxial digital in on your receiver, then let me know and i can let you know exactly how to hook that up...else just stick with method #1

 

[swifty3]

i have a coaxial jack on my reciever, but it is for FM radio i think. will that work 2?

 

[Erasmus-X]

Digital coaxial is quite different than the coaxial RF input your receiver uses for the FM antenna. It's an RCA type jack (usually color-coded orange) that accepts a S/PDIF signal. By making this connection, you use the DACs built into the receiver instead of of the sound card's internal DAC. A S/PDIF signals are also used by Dolby Digital (AC-3) and DTS surround formats.

If your receiver is capable of decoding Dolby Digital and/or DTS, it should have at least one digital input, whether it is digital coax or optical.

 

[chizow]

Yep, the ways listed above will both work, but need to know about your receiver and sound card, as well as what you expect for sound quality and what you will be playing on those speakers. I had a similar rig with the mic jacks to RCA in college, works fine for mp3's, but you will probably want to go with an optical cable for DVD movies or other digital sound. Also, be careful with mp3's, poor quality mp3's can damage your speakers.

Chiz

 

[bunker]

Look here