Audio Question

[Ozymandias]

Are there any audiophiles out there? I'd like to know how I can go about getting line level output from a heaphone jack.

 

[OccamMD]

great quality, or good quality?

 

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by OccamMD
great quality, or good quality?

Can you tell me both ways?

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

If you are looking for true sourece-out audio from a headphone jack, you can't

1. It is post-preamp which means all signal changes, such as volume, tone (*yech*), balance, etc. have already been applied.

2. Other than that all you would need is an impedance matching network. Most headphones I have worked with had impedances of 300 Ohms.

3. A common preamp in is 50KOhms

I have a sneaky suspicion you are trying to drive an amplifier with an MP3 player, If so, impedance is going to be the least of your problems. Overdriving the inputs will be what gets you.

What you will need to fine is an impedance matching transformer. I poked around a bit, and they are available to meet your need, the onnly thing is you will need to do some assembly work.

There is probably a canned one available as audiophiles have the weirdest needs. I just could not find anything under $100.

A

 

[OccamMD]

Although not great, radio shack carries some audio transformers, what are you trying to do w/the signal?

 

[Rocketjunkie]

Radio Shack carries an adapter from stereo mini jack to a pair of RCA plugs. This is all you need for connecting a portable MP3/CD/cassette player to an amp. Just don't turn up the volume on the portable unit too far. Plug the jack into the headphone jack on the portable player and the RCA plugs into the AUX or Line In on the amp.

 

[Mike]

My iPod dock has a line out which I've connected to a cheap Amp...works pretty well.

 

[Ozymandias]

I'm considering building a music server for my dorm room next semester. Ideally, I would use a Mac Mini, find an old tube amp and some nice monitors. I've been doing a little research and I've found some adaptors that will actually take USB output and give you line out for an amplifier. I think I'm going to use that. Thanks for the info guys.

 

[OccamMD]

This is what I plan on spreading around the house, not too expensive really for what it does:

https://www.rokulabs.com/products/soundbridge/servernotes.php

 

[brianc]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
I'm considering building a music server for my dorm room next semester.

I haven't tried this one personally, but this link was just posted to the Central Florida Linux
Users group list-

https://www.geexbox.org/en/start.html

from the web page
So, GeeXboX is a full operating system, running under Linux and based on the excellent MPlayer. No need for a hard drive, you just have to put the GeeXboX bootable CD into the CD-Drive of any Pentium-class computer to boot it. Moreover, GeeXboX is free software, created as open-source software.

...nearly every kind of media file can be played with GeeXboX, with the OS supporting :

* MPEG 1/2 movies (MPG files, VCDs, DVDs ...)
* MPEG 4 movies (DivX, XviD ...)
* RealMedia and Windows Media movies.
* OggMedia streams
* Matroska streams
* Audio streams like : MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV (AudioCD), AC3 ...

Sounds a lot like what you want to do (pun intended)...

 

[brianc]

There's also an interesting article on SlashDot about using 802.11
as a transport for the media...

https://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/05/02/01/1545241.shtml?tid=141&tid=4

Not sure of the ERAU ResNet TOS (or the coverage you could achive), but if you
can use wireless to deliver the tunes, it might be something to look into.


GOOD LUCK! This sounds like a cool project.

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
find an old tube amp

Gee, I would offer to sell you my pair of Carver Silver seven Monoblocks for this endeavor, however since I inherited them from my wife's family I might get in trouble.

At a suggested price of $25K each they would also put a dent in your tuition budget...

Sad thing is I listen to these two works of art about once every two months now.

Don't mess with tubes. Buy a nice Mosfet amp for this. A real gem is an Adcom GFA535 or GFA545 - you can get the 535 on ebay for around $100 if you are patient. Alternatively, look for a Niles SI 275 or similar. These amps are far better suited to your use.

As for the monitors, check out some Boston Acoustics A60's or even better in a dorm environment, a set of Niles OS10 or OS20 indoor/outdoor speakers.

A