On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Will Yardley wrote:
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:31:46PM -0400, Neal Rhodes wrote:
Now, you could have 4 sets of powered speakers plus the CD player. Or you could find something to mix the 3 outputs together and run it to a single set of speakers. Or even use the AUX input on the CD player.
A small pro audio mixer[1] would do it, but if you don't mind matching the levels of the various devices (and if you don't mind the occasional "shock" when you forget to do this), and don't need to listen to more than one device at once, you could use a passive switching box (Radio Shack probably still sells one[2]) that takes in 3-4 sets of RCA ins and lets you switch between them to a single output. Making such a box isn't difficult either (a multi-position rotary switch would probably be your best bet in that case).
With cheapo pc speakers with a tiny little amp there isn't much likelyhood
that you'll blow the drivers, but with a decent sized amp or larger self powered monitors it's probably not worth the risk.
You could use Y adapters, but this would not be the preferred solution - it would probably result in degraded signal quality and problems matching levels.
You could also do some daisy-chaining (i.e., plug the laptop into the line in of the desktop, use your music player software to play music directly off the mp3 player if possible, etc.) and try to play everything out of your desktop (using the builtin mixer software to adjust the relative levels).
[1] http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=UB802 http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=POWERMIXIII http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=BLEND6 etc.
[2] http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=15-1983
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