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Connecting Laptop to Stereo Reciever?


R-3

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I have used the cable from headphone jack to RCA to connect several laptops to my receiver. In my experience, with the laptops that I used, it sounded like crap.

 

So I ended up going with this usb sound card from turtle beach.

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/micro/home.aspx

 

It is small and works great for me. It can send analog or digital to the receiver.

 

Theron

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There are two ways to connect it. If your receiver has a S/PDIF optical input you need the optical cable. With this you could even send 5.1 dolby digital.

 

You can also use analog cable. It has the headphone jack, and you can use the headphone to rca cable for that. That is how I used it. For some reason the sound card in my laptops were very very poor and this thing sounded much better.

 

You might try getting the headphone to rca cable and connecting it to you stereo and see if yours sounds any better than mine. If you don't like it, then try a usb sound card.

 

Theron

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One thing to be careful about is power coming out of the receiver. Laptops until most CD players of old have a powered Headphone jack. Most receivers will have a low level of power comming through units, to give it a little boost when it comes in, however some cheap units will push power back in large un-fluid (un-fluid? sorry couldnt think of anything better) jolts, and some high end receivers constantly push power back through, in theory this could push enough power back to fry your motherbored.

 

I personally have never had an issue, or even seen first hand that it happens, but if its a long term setup look to optical, or find a "one way" headphone-->Component(RCA) plug, that either limits power back, or has a fuse built in.

 

Tim

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