How to Connect Computer to Amplifier
By rajan1311
Ways to connect you PC to Amplifier/Home theater
There are many people who want to connect their Computer to their Home Theater or Hi-Fi systems. Here I will tell 2 ways to that make it possible. Both are easy and can be easily done by you. If you want to connect your computer to TV, please have a look at the following guide:
There are 2 types of connections, one is optical and the other is coaxial. Both can provide 5.1 surround sound. To know if your Hi-Fi/home theater system supports coaxial or optical, look at the back of the Amplifier of your system.
Now, make sure that your computer sound card or the onboard sound card has similar connectors.
Connection using Coaxial
Just get a cable like this one:
And connect one end to your sound card and other to the amplifier of your system.
These cables can be found at most electrical stores. The ones that are found in places like ezone and chroma are very costly since they are gold plated. You can find cheaper ones online in places like amazon or ebay. The will provide 5.1 sound through 1 single line. I have used these and they work pretty good. Sound quality is good.
Using Optical cables
First get the cables. They look like this:
These are also known as TOSlink cables (derived from Toshiba link).
These were a bit hard to find in a store. At e zone and chroma they were very costly. They ranged from Rs 1600 to Rs 3500. But u can get cheaper ones from Ebay. They start at Rs350 there. The major advantage that optical cables have over co axial cables is that these use light signals instead of electrical signals. Hence, these do not experience any kind of electromagnetic disturbances.
I have also tried using these, but I had a problem, one of the heads were loosely connected and hence I got real bad sound. I could not find a fix for it and will return the chord for a new one. Will tell about it then.
This could get very useful when u want to attach ur PC/HTPC to your Home theater when you want to watch Bluray. I mean, u will not get 7.1 audio, but u will save the money as you do not have to buy a new system.
I hope this was helpful for those who were seeking to connect their PCs to their home theater systems.
Feel free to ask if you did not understand something in this article.
also have a look at this: Wester digital media player
- WD HD media player
Western digital, better known for their top quality hard drives, came out with a very good product, the wester digital TV HD media player. Read more about its features here.
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Comments
Yes i agree with that. When i used optcal, one of the sides did not fit properly and so the sound was pathetic.
great article!
I used a 3.5mm stereo mini phone plug to dual RCA jack stereo cable, in order to connect a laptop to an amplifier - a sound system I was using for a dance. The laptop contained all the dance music I wanted to play. The laptop was running Windows Vista.
The sound was awful. Fuzzy, with just a hint of the music playing, very muddy sounding, behind a foreground of fuzzy, hissing sound.
I tried a different laptop, also running Windows Vista. Same thing. I tried a pre-amp, but there was no improvement in the sound quality.
Then, I use a laptop with Windows XP. The sound was perfect.
Same music tracks, even the same Windows sound application (JetAudio).
Can you suggest a cause for this problem?
newprouser 2 years ago
I never knew about the optical cables earlier nor have i seen that port either. Well i learnt something new :-)
Btw i feel its better to use coaxial , probably because optical stuff usually work better when everything is pre-manufactured,especially the joints etc.
I might be wrong in the case of these cables, but thats what i feel.