Speakers - slightly off topic

[Will Yardley]

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).

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

w