is an orange plug Digital Speakers?

[crazychicken]

I plugged in some Polk Speakers into a desktop, and even with the windows volume turned all the way up, they were extremely soft. My friend said that since the plug on the speakers was orange, they were "digital" speakers, and therefore that would happen without a digital output.

is this correct?

thanks
david

 

[CalvinHobbes]

If the speakers are not powered then the sound card is not going to be able to drive them very well.

 

[Leros]

The orange is line out. The green is what you would use for your speakers. Im guessing the green is amplified and that the orange is used to connect to other hardware, not speakesr.

About 5 years ago, I went through the same thing. Drove me crazy. The orange jack had a picture of a speaker on it, so I figured it was the speaker jack (this was before I could tell you the difference between a CPU and a hard drive). Ah man, I spent two weeks with no sound cuz of that.

 

[Leros]

double post

 

[Varun]

The sound card doesn't have an amplified signal, well not enough to run speakers anyways. It will run headphones OK.

Are these Polk Audio home speakers? If so, as CalvinHobbes said, you can't run them off a soundcard. Computer speakers have internal amplifiers, and need to be plugged into the wall for power to drive the speakers. The signal must be amplified.

Regardless, the green is a standard color for front right/left, and is the main output. Some of the other colors are standardized as well, but not all of them. You should be running your speakers off the green output, but if you tell us what kind of soundcard you are using people can likely tell you for sure what the orange output is.

 

[minofifa]

i think i see where your friend is coming from though. On my sound connections, i have an oragne i/o and it is indeed for a digital connection (s/pdif i think)