Speaker connection

[doodah10]

I have a friend who has a PC with the usual sound connections, the three holes. The green for speakers, yellow for headphones, and red for microphone. The speakers she has have six units. All wires go into a large woofer box and it powers two left and two right speakers, and there is a small center speaker. The problem is there are three inputs marked center, left and right. No matter where you plug the input, two or four of the speakers are silent. Is there a splitter I can buy to put the inputs where they should go? Or an adapter to fit an empty PCI hole in the case, with three outputs?

[Mustanley]

If you want true 6 (or 5.1 or whatever) channel output, you are going to have to buy a sound card that supports surround sound and has three separate output jacks. (front,rear, center/sub).
If you just want to output the same stereo signal to all the speakers (don't care about true surround) you can buy the necessary audio splitters from radioshack.

[Matthias99]

And depending on your friend's motherboard, it may actually support 5.1 audio -- you just have to get the audio software to reconfigure the headphone and mic ports so that they work as two more stereo outputs. If you could provide more info on his system, we could be more help. :)

Otherwise, yes, you need a Soundblaster Live 5.1 or better for surround sound.

[doodah10]

The system is an HP. Im not sure of the model # but it has an AMD 2400 with only 128Mb RAM (not nearly enough). The audio and video cards are integrated to the board. If there is a single output to three input splitter cable available that is the easiest method. But I know she loves her music and might spring for a good sound card. I have excellent sound from my Monsoon speakers and Asus A7N8X DLX MB Nvidia Soundstorm processor but I havent yet seen one of the 5.1 cards so I didnt know if three outputs was available.

[Captain Hilts]

Well find out what type of onboard sound it is, it still might support the 6 channels like the others said by switching the function of the output jacks. It's also possible that there's an SPDIF output on the motherboard. You'd be able to use that if the speakers have an SPDIF input (they probably don't have one though if they didn't come with a seperate decoder).

[doodah10]

Sorry, I had the machine wrong. It is a Compaq S4020WM. It has onboard sound, Realtek ALC201. Any idea where I would find info on how to switch it over?