How to connect 2 audio sources to amps? Direct Connect? Switch box? other?

**mattress** · 06-02-2006, 05:21 PM

Here's a diagram of my current system (before I add the PC)

I know, it's a crappy/rough example. I have 4 RCA cables running from the headunit to the 4 channel amp, and 2 RCA's from the headunit to the subwoofer's amp.

The CarPC is going to have a sound card capable of decoding dolby & DTS, etc---the kind of card that has the 3 3.5mm jacks. I will adapt the 3 3.5mm -> to -> RCA splitters -> to the amps, so I get 5.1 output to my 4 channel amp + subwoofer amp.

Now comes the tricky part -- Wiring everything together!

I have 2 ideas:
A) Attach RCA splitters to the amps' inputs ----- and just make sure that only 1 device was outputting (or powered up) at a time? My headunit has 8v outputs, would this effect the PC since they'd all be directly connected together with the amp?

B) Is there some kind of switcher I could get, to just switch between the headunit and the PC? It would have to have 12 RCA inputs total, and 6 RCA outputs (4 + 2 from headunit, 4 + 2 from PC)
Does something like this even exist?

Thanks for reading!

**3onDubs** · 06-02-2006, 05:50 PM

You're going to want to use the aux in on your headunit and connect your sound card to that....there is an aux-in adapter (if u search, u shall find) that will allow u to treat ur pc as a cd changer and simply switch to it from your headunit. This will give u a higher ouput voltage to your amps and give you overall better sound quality as well....good luck.

**mattress** · 06-03-2006, 04:42 PM

yeah, thanks for your reply.

This is actually how I was originally going to do it. I already have 2 RCA cables ran from the headunit to the trunk for the aux input.

But then I started thinking about getting true 5.1 DTS surround sound from DVD's sounded fun...