In another thread I asked about capturing audio to my HDD to record later. (It works!) 
Now I have another task I’d like to do. My favorite broadcast is on when I get home from work. I used to listen to it on a local station, but they re-formatted and now the nearest broadcast affiliate is in Fargo. I get it in my car, but not in the house.
From their website, they simulcast it live for free. However that leaves me tied to the computer room to listen to it. What I’d like to do is hook up speakers in the Living Room to the soundcard so I can hear it there or even in the kitchen.Someone I know that owns a computer store is my go-to hardware guy. But when I called him he said he didn’t know off-hand of a way to do it. I figure he was either too busy to answer a non-money making question at the time, or he was thinking strictly along computer hardware and not giving consideration to rigging it from Radio Shack parts.
So I turn to the SDMB, confident in the database of knowledge here. How do I do this, and what is the cheapest way?
Thanks.
What kind of jacks and wires do the speakers have, and what sort of inputs does the soundcard have?
Almost certainly you’d go Soundcard -> Preamp -> Long cable ->Speakers. Unless you have active speakers, in which case you can almost certainly miss out the preamp.
The soundcard has the standard one plug-in found on personal radios and CD players. (Left and right channels on one plug at different spacings from tip)
The speakers I have are the type that have the two bare wires to connect with. (Not sure what that’s called.) Another options is to dig out the older portable radio speakers with the RCA jacks.
The only thing I can think of would be to get a heaphone-style jack (the one terminal kind) and splice it directly to the speakers and run everything straight from the SC.
The only problem I see is the speakers are 150-watt Fisher’s and may need to buy an amp to hear it.
I thought of wireless, but not sure of expense or if it’s even possible.
Doh! One more problem is the little fact that the speakers have a total of 4 wires, while the jack would only have two.
Boldface, I’m also starting to think an amp is going to be required. I just hate to spend that much on this problem.
New thought. I could just splice in another set of comp speakers to the ones in here. Does anyone know of power loss to the speakers doing this or audio quality loss doing so? The secondary speakers will be about 25 feet away. The primary speakers are juiced by the SC itself, while the secondary could be AC powered.
(3 in a row) :smack: Sorry.
I forgot to mention the possibility of damage to the SC by putting too much drain on the power it can supply. What are the chances of that, and should I scrap that idea and think only of alternate powered 2nd speakers?
Get a cheap ‘n’ cheerful pre!
Don’t know the figures, but I’m sure that’ll work fine - at least as long as you’re only driving one pair of speakers at once. I do something similar myself, and I use c.20’ of microphone cable to link a soundcard and active speakers. If you are intending to drive 4 speakers simultaneously, then I don’t know what the issues are in detail. I imagine the impedance seen by the soundcard would be lower than designed for and this could lead to soundcard damage? Anyway, I wouldn’t do it until you have a better answer than this one!
Oh yeah, the wattage rating of the speakers is completely irrelevant in terms of how loud the speakers would sound when hooked up to the line level outs on your sound card.
You can’t run the unpowered Fishers off of your soundcard without an amp. Well, you can, but the signal level will be so low you won’t be able to hear it. It may be so low that it won’t be able to overcome the friction and inertia in the speakers to move them even a little tiny bit. So, unless you have an amp handy, that’s that. Patching in a second set of computer speakers (particularly of the self-amplified sort) is probably the easiest and most effective solution here. Signal loss over 20’ of wire is neglible; picking up RF noise would be more worrisome, but unless you run the wire right next to a bank of light dimmers or something you should be fine. I routinely run signal wires a lot further than that, though admittedly I try to avoid long runs of unbalanced line (which this is). But even so, 20’ just isn’t very far.
I will not recommend using a Y-adaptor to run two sets of speakers. As Boldface Type says, that will lower the impedance that the soundcard sees. Probably it would be fine, but I have no desire to be responsible for frying your soundcard if it isn’t.
Incidentally, your three wire/four wire dilemma is no dilemma at all. The three wires are left signal/right signal/ground, and the four wires are left signal/ground and right signal/ground. You would just jumper the two grounds together, as they both end up tied to the chassis ground on the sound card anyways.
Thanks Gorsnack. I’m going to try the second set of comp speakers option if I get time for it tomorrow. I’ll report back if it works.
If you want the most elegant solution, how about a pair of wireless speakers such as these?
You can get usually perfectly nice amps or receiver ampfliers at thrift stores for $20-$30. Sometimes you’d be amazed at the deals you can get in that price range.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but what is feeding the 150w speakers in your living room now?
Are these just extra speakers you have hanging around and you don’t already have them hooked up to anything?
They’re from my component system, but since I got the surround sound I didn’t need the Fisher. It went into storage, but for whatever reason the speakers are still here.
astro, are you talking about a regular, stereo receiver amp? If not (or even if so) what would the hookup entail to get the amp integrated?
Tapioca, the suggestion is appreciated. It’s just too much to pay to hear a show such a short distance away. Thanks, though.
You’ll still need an amp in the living room, but you can get one of these wireless audio setups for about $20 if you don’t want to run a cable all the way across your house.
If you don’t have secondary line out on your sound card buy a *flexible * dual 1/8th inch headphone jack cable. Plug your regular PC speakers into one of the jacks and plug a - 6 foot 1/8 headphone plug out to dual L+ R phono plugs cable - into the other one. Run this second cable to the receiver/amp and plug it into the “Aux” - "CD " or “tape” cable inputs on the receiver.
All these cables are available at Radio Shack.