AUDIO CONVERTER PRO INPUT LEVEL PC

At best, you get very bad audio, and at worst you can fry a circuit board component.Ĭonversely, connecting Line Level RCA to bare-wire speakers can lead to bad audio, low volume and overheated speaker components, as some large speakers need the airflow from cone movement to keep themselves cool.

AUDIO CONVERTER PRO INPUT LEVEL PC

You'll also run into trouble if you try connecting a Line Level input to the microphone jack on a PC or an iPod, etc. This also applies in situations that don't use bare-wire! If you're feeding Line Level into a microphone Pre-Amp, or connecting a Line Level RCA into a socket on a receiver designed for turntables - things are not going to go well. Additionally, even if the receiving device can handle the power, the sound quality is likely to suffer dramatically as the amp is overloaded. The problem is that if you're feeding high voltage Speaker Level audio into a device that is expecting Line Level (eg: a powered speaker with its own amplifier) you're running the risk of overloading the device and causing permanent, irreperable damage to your equipment.

Why shouldn't I join RCA and Bare Wire?Īt Cable Chick, we're often asked for a solution that allows the joining of bare-wire or banana plugs to RCA sockets (or vice-versa). This allows for more power to go through cleanly without overheating the wire. Big speakers have large, stiff components that need a lot of juice to move.īecause of the higher voltage and wattage used by speakers, we connect them up using heavy-gauge, bare-wire speaker cable. The physical size and power handling of the speaker, combined with the volume set by the output, can push this number up to 100V or more. Speaker Level is also measured in volts, typically using over 10V. They sound loud because they're placed right up next to your ears, but sending that level of power directly to a desktop or home theatre speaker won't give it enough juice to move their much larger magnets. Same goes for Media Centres, PCs, Tablets, CD Players - you name it!Įarbuds and headphones cleverly use Line Level power to drive very small speakers. The 3.5mm cable between your iPod and the Aux input on your speaker system is also line level. Home Theatres abound with Line Level connections a 2RCA stereo connection between your DVD Player and Receiver is Line Level. Line Level is measured in volts, usually hitting between 0.5V and 1V. Turntables and instrument pickups which don't have built-in amplifiers usually fall into the same voltage range as microphones, and also require preamps or dedicated inputs to amplify the signal. As you can imagine, this isn't a whole lot of power, and so microphones need to be fed into Pre-Amps or Amplifiers with special Microphone inputs which boost it up to another Audio Level. Mic Level is measured in millivolts, and usually comes in around the 1mV to 100mV range, depending largely on whether you're speaking at a wedding or screaming at a rock concert. Speaking into a microphone only produces a few thousandths of a volt, but loudspeakers need a whole bunch of volts to make their big magnets move. The determining factor here is the voltage which runs them. There are three main Audio Levels that are worth knowing about: Both types of Digital Audio need to be decoded and amplified before reaching the speakers. Optical SPDIF doesn't have a 'level', but you could consider Coaxial SPDIF as a Line Level signal if you wanted to (it's not really).

Digital Audio is always converted back into analogue before passing on to your speakers.

Audio converter pro input level