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Low volume when hooked to two computers

N

n0sferatu

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 23, 2005
Messages
115
Hi,

I have a PC and a brand new Mac Mini (Oct 2009 model). The speakers I am using are Logitech Z-2300 2.1. My setup is as follows:

I have 3.5mm male-to-male cables going from both the PC soundcard and the mac mini audio-out to a Y cable with two 3.5mm female ends and one 3.5mm male end. The 3.5mm male end goes to a 3.5mm female/female connector. The other end of this connector has the 3.5mm male jack from my speakers hooked to it.

With this setup and my old Mac Mini it allowed me to have audio from both my PC and Mac go to one set of 2.1 speaker system. I could play audio from both sources and the volume was normal. It worked great. However, with this new Mac whenever the 3.5mm jack is hooked into the Mac, the audio coming from my PC is extremely low volume. As soon as I unplug the 3.5mm cable from the Mac, the audio coming from my PC returns to a normal volume level.

I have no idea why this changed when the only different element in the setup was the new Mac Mini. How should I go about solving this problem? Should I be using a different setup? Is there a way to boost the volume? I'm pretty clueless about audio, so any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
Consider yourself lucky that both computers still work. There could have been a lot of smoke and a lovely smell of burning components.
 
Haha, what is the proper way to have audio from two computers go to a single set of speakers? I don't need to hook up any other audio sources, so I don't need something overkill and expensive. Just the bare minimum really.
 
You need an A/B switch of some kind. Basically, what's happening is the jack on the other computer causing a short circuit, which is diminishing the output of your signal. If the output jack on the other computer didn't have a high level of impedence, you wouldn't be hearing anything at all.
 
I'd argue that he needs an A/0/B switch. If there's even a very short period of time in which A and B are connected (which happens sometimes with cheap A/B switches), things might go very bad. Those two computers need to be electrically decoupled with absolute certainty.
 
If you cant find a switch, just get longer cables and make the switch manually.
 
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