Two PC's to one set of speakers?

paqman · 10-06-2005, 09:23 PM

Hi everyone, quick question. I have two PC's that I am trying to put out to one set of speakers. So I basically just ran to Radio Shack, bought a y-splitter that goes from one female jack to 2 male jacks. I plugged the two male ends into the different computer's sound cards, and then plugged the speaker cable into the one femail input on the y cable. Now my regular PC works just fine. It's a custom made box with an ASUS mother board just using onboard sound. I think my problem might be with the other pc. It's a Dell PowerEdge SC420 server. It didn't have onboard sound, so I put an old Yamaha DSX card in it. The sound is working, but it's staticky and scratchy. Could it just be that the server isn't meant to handle sound cards very well? Or could it be something else.

I know the Yamaha sound card is ok, because it was my main sound card in the other pc, and was working fine. I just pulled it and put it in the server, and switched my other pc to using on-board sound.

Any help would be appreciated.

**leroys1000** · 10-06-2005, 10:29 PM

You should not tie the outputs of 2 sound cards together,
very easy to burn them out and may be the problem.
You need to get an audio switch.I found they don't really make them for computers,
so you need to get an audio switch and RCA adapters or
do like I did and buy the parts and build 1.

paqman · 10-06-2005, 10:30 PM

Thanks, I suspected it might be something like that. I'll either get a switch, or just do without sound in pc.
Thanks.

10-06-2005, 09:23 PM	#1 (permalink)
paqman Registered User Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 5 OS: XP Pro	Two PC's to one set of speakers? Hi everyone, quick question. I have two PC's that I am trying to put out to one set of speakers. So I basically just ran to Radio Shack, bought a y-splitter that goes from one female jack to 2 male jacks. I plugged the two male ends into the different computer's sound cards, and then plugged the speaker cable into the one femail input on the y cable. Now my regular PC works just fine. It's a custom made box with an ASUS mother board just using onboard sound. I think my problem might be with the other pc. It's a Dell PowerEdge SC420 server. It didn't have onboard sound, so I put an old Yamaha DSX card in it. The sound is working, but it's staticky and scratchy. Could it just be that the server isn't meant to handle sound cards very well? Or could it be something else. I know the Yamaha sound card is ok, because it was my main sound card in the other pc, and was working fine. I just pulled it and put it in the server, and switched my other pc to using on-board sound. Any help would be appreciated.

10-06-2005, 10:29 PM	#2 (permalink)
leroys1000 Tech Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 770 OS: Windows XP	You should not tie the outputs of 2 sound cards together, very easy to burn them out and may be the problem. You need to get an audio switch.I found they don't really make them for computers, so you need to get an audio switch and RCA adapters or do like I did and buy the parts and build 1.

10-06-2005, 10:30 PM	#3 (permalink)
paqman Registered User Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 5 OS: XP Pro	Thanks, I suspected it might be something like that. I'll either get a switch, or just do without sound in pc. Thanks.