TR Forums

Hello everyone and Happy Thanksgiving,

Has anyone used a stereo RCA output from say a cable box or Bluray player to the the blue 1/8" line in jack on there motherboard to use your computers speakers for sound instead of my crappy TV's speakers.

I am using a Gigabyte P67-UD4-B3 motherboard with the Realtek 889 sound chip that work's fantastic with my Advent sb750 Powered Partners monitor speaker's with great stereo separation and direction. Sometimes it truly sounds like surround.

So I am currently using my only stereo RCA to 1/8" stereo jack cable to get sound from my computer to my speakers.

My big question is if I purchase another RCA to 1/8" jack and hook my Cable set top box's RCA audio out to my motherboards 1/8" light blue "Line In" jack will I be able to use my computers speakers while I watch cable TV ?? Or will I have a delay in the sound outputting from my cable box to my computers speakers ?

Has anyone tried this? Any feedback would really appreciated before I spend 5-10$ on a 1/8"stereo jack to RCA cable.

Thanks ahead of time. I know most everyone is tired from Turkey trictophene, I know I am

You shouldn't have any delay. I plug my phone into my line in jack and play music from it all the time.

I definitely get delay when using my line-in on my PC. I tried playing music from iTunes and plugged guitar processor line out to my PC and had enough delay to where it was impossible to play along. Just try it and see what happens

Here's the answer to the input delay:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=89886

Philldoe wrote:

You shouldn't have any delay. I plug my phone into my line in jack and play music from it all the time.

If you're just listening to music how would you notice if there's a delay? Even a half second of lag isn't going to be particularly noticeable for music playback since you have no external cues to let you know when the sounds are hitting the line in jack. But just a few tens of milliseconds can be enough to make video playback feel subtly wrong because sounds aren't perfectly synched to what's happening on the screen any more. It is particularly bad for dialogue, since it gives you a "dubbed foreign language film" effect.

Edit: To the OP... you can get some idea of how much delay your soundcard and drivers are introducing by tapping (gently!) on a microphone plugged into the mic in jack. Does there seem to be a delay between your finger hitting the mic and the thump coming out of the speakers? Also note that the delay can vary substantially depending on whether you've got the input routed directly to the output, or have things set up to capture the incoming stream, process it locally in software (e.g. to add effects and/or EQ), and then pass it to the line out.

My solution to a similar problem was to use a stereo combiner:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

You just need this and a male to male mini-stereo cable (coming from PC) and a 1/4" to 1/8" adaptor to plug your computer speakers in.

Basically both audio sources will be fed to the speakers at all times, so you don't need to do any input selection.

Adaptive wrote:

My solution to a similar problem was to use a stereo combiner:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

You just need this and a male to male mini-stereo cable (coming from PC) and a 1/4" to 1/8" adaptor to plug your computer speakers in.

Basically both audio sources will be fed to the speakers at all times, so you don't need to do any input selection.

From the description (and the first customer review) it seems like this device downmixes the channels to mono? I don't think that's what he wants. If that's the case, he would need two of them, at $30 each -- a pretty expensive solution!