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| How To . . . Connect A Stereo To A PC |
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Step By Step August 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 8 Page(s) 129-130 in print issue |
How To . . . Connect A Stereo To A PC | ||
 The recent explosion of MP3 and other digital music formats across the Internet has shifted much of the musical focus from stereos to computers. Most modern desktop PCs come with both a sound card and speakers, and even most notebook PCs have a built-in sound card and tiny speakers. However, computers still have the following major disadvantages when it comes to playing music: 1. The amplifier and speakers that come with computers are inferior to most home stereos and all but the very cheapest boom boxes. 2. The amplifier built into sound cards and/or built into PC speakers can rarely produce a level of volume adequate for a party or even a large listening room. 3. PCs often aren't located where you relax or entertain, and moving a computer is much more involved than repositioning stereo speakers. You can overcome all of these problems by connecting your computer to your stereo system in a variety of ways. Computers can play music from three sources: CDs, digital files such as those in the MP3 format, and directly from the Internet. Because most modern stereos can play CDs directly, it makes little sense to use your computer to play a CD for your stereo. Most users are interested mainly in using their computers to play MP3 files through a stereo system. Without a high-speed connection, listening to music directly from the Internet requires listening to lower quality music and tying up a phone line while doing this. You can also send music from your stereo to your computer, which proves useful when you want to use the PC to turn music produced by your stereo into an MP3 file. Listening to music means you're listening to an analog signal. That is, the signal has pitch and frequency. All of the processing within your computer is digital, which means the information is made up of zeros and ones. Your PC's sound card is responsible for converting the computer's digital information into analog sound for listening. The sound card also converts analog inputs into digital information for computer processing. These jobs obviously mean the sound card is critical to the quality of the music your computer produces. A cheap sound card, like those most PCs come with, will produce poor music, regardless of the quality of your stereo. The first step in improving your sound often is upgrading your sound card.  Computer To Stereo MP3 files are amazingly versatile when planning the music for a party. They take up about 1MB (megabyte) per minute, so music for a four-hour party takes up only a quarter of a gigabyte, which won't burden many of today's large hard drives. Because you only convert the music tracks you want to hear to MP3, you don't have to listen to unwanted tracks, and because all the music is in one location, you never have to stop the music to change CDs. All MP3 players let you choose the sequence for the music so you can plan the music for your party minute-by-minute. Depending on your hardware configuration, you have three options for getting your MP3 music from your PC to stereo: writeable CDs, broadcasting, and cables. Only the cable option works for transferring Internet-direct music from your computer to your stereo in real time. If you have a writeable CD drive, it probably came with an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version of Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4. The OEM version of this software lets you copy any files or songs to a writeable CD. Copying MP3 files to a CD, however, doesn't help much because your stereo doesn't recognize MP3 files. If you upgrade to the full version of the software (Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 Deluxe, $89) it can convert MP3 files back to a music format CD players can read as it copies them to the writeable CD. You lose the space-saving advantages of MP3 files when you convert them, but you end up with CDs that any player can read, including a car player. If your stereo has a CD changer, you can quickly produce a couple of CDs of custom music that will keep your party going without interruption.
CD-FM is a miniature self-powered FM stereo radio transmitter from H45 Technology. It runs off two AA batteries and plugs into any miniature jack (rather than the larger jack used on home stereo systems) and broadcasts the sound coming out of the jack to a radio frequency you choose in the range of the 88.1-89.5 FM frequencies. You can then listen to the signal on your stereo. The signal is adjustable and can be picked up by any stereo receiver within about 30 feet. It works well in homes and avoids the problem of stringing wires. CD-FM ($19.95; http://www.h45.com) is especially useful if you are making an infrequent connection for a special occasion rather than a standing connection or if you wish to listen to the music outside. CD-FM also can transfer signals from your portable MP3 player (or notebook PC) to your car stereo. Your final option for sending music from a PC to a stereo, and your only option for sending music from a stereo to a PC, is to run cabling between them. You need a cable with a stereo one-eighth-inch mini-plug on one end and two RCA jacks on the other, which should be available at any stereo store. Be sure to use shielded cable, not just speaker wires with jacks on the end. The shielding helps prevent the cabling from picking up any random noise. You cannot easily splice these cables, so be sure to buy a cable that is long enough. The two RCA jacks plug into the sound card's Line Out jacks. Be sure to use the Line Out jacks rather than the Speaker Out jacks because this bypasses the cheap amplifier on your sound card. You do not need amplification because your stereo can do a much better job. You plug the stereo plug into the Aux In plug on your stereo amplifier. Cheaper package stereos and many boom boxes lack an Aux In plug, which means you must use one of the other two approaches to connect your computer to your stereo. If your computer is far from your stereo, you'll naturally need a long cable. The longer the cable, however, the greater the chance that the cable will pick up interference. We've used up to 25 feet of cabling without problems, but you should look for ways of routing the cable that minimize the length. Remember that the process of creating an MP3 file reduces the quality of the music stored in the file. This loss of quality remains no matter how the resulting music is played. While you may not have noticed this while listening to music over computer speakers, you'll notice it when playing MP3 music over a good home stereo. While this may not matter for a party, it could be a problem when you're listening to the music for your own enjoyment. Stereo To Computer As discussed above, cable is the only way to connect your stereo to your computer. The only reason to make this connection is to convert music from a cassette, radio broadcast, or phonograph to MP3. To connect a stereo to computer, you'll need a cable that has two one-eighth-inch stereo mini-plugs on one end. These plug into the Line In jacks on your sound card. The cable will need the appropriate plug for the stereo's output jack. Note that this cable plugs into different jacks than the cable used to transfer music from your computer to your stereo. You can either run two cables or use a single cable and move the connections as required. While you must use a cable to make the connection, that cable does not have to run between your stereo and computer. If your stereo has a cassette recorder, you can use your stereo to produce a cassette of the music you wish to convert to MP3. You can then use a portable cassette player located near your computer to transfer the contents of the cassette into the computer. You can even use a portable Walkman-like player. This requires a cable with two one-eighth-inch stereo mini-plugs on one end and a miniature headphone plug on the other end. While using a cassette as intermediate storage has the potential to degrade the audio, audio from the radio or a phonograph is rarely of the highest quality to begin with so the actual degradation may be minimal. In addition, since sound from a tape, phonograph, or radio receiver is of lower quality than the sound from a CD, the resulting MP3 file will be of lower quality. Plus, unless you use a sound editor program to clean up the sound, any pops or scratches from your phonograph records will be faithfully reproduced in the resulting MP3 file. by Ronny Richardson
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