Are there any electronics experts around here. I need to know if connecting the sound cards from 2 different PCs through a Y-cord into 1 sound system (external amp, sub, etc.) will cause any crosstalk or impedance problems. I thought about using a switch, but I would rather not.

 

BTW, I'm not sure what crosstalk or impedance really mean, but I know enough to suspect they MIGHT be relevant.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Walter

 

[Blunderov] First a caveat: I am not an electronics expert. But since nobody else has replied I’ll venture my thoughts.

 

I don’t think there would be a problem doing this assuming that the external amp has an input for a digital signal. (Alternatively, the sound cards would need to be able to produce an analogue signal. In this case it’s possible that you would need to put a pre-amp into the circuit to produce sufficient signal for the amp to work with.)

 

If the signal you are working with is digital, as it very likely is, then I don’t believe impedance will be a problem. This is a rating of the resistance that an analogue circuit offers to the signal being sent along it (I believe).

 

Neither do I believe that crosstalk would be a problem, I believe that this is an induction phenomenon and would only relate to analogue systems.

 

It would probably be helpful if the sound cards were the same make. There is hideous plethora of methods of encoding and decoding video and audio signals and having fewer variables in the system is probably a good idea. That said, you are probably in no real danger here, assuming that the amp has a digital input option: it will either recognize the signal or it won’t.

 

If you are working only with digital it is very unlikely that you will harm anything in any of the systems, so if it was me, I would go ahead and give it a try.

 

If you are sending a digital signal into an analogue input, you will need a device that converts that signal to an analogue signal first.

These devices are commonly available but, as usual, the more you spend the better the quality. In theory anyway. Here it would be

very prudent to get some well informed advice as to what sort of output levels would be suitable for the input of the amplifier.

 

I think Bill Roh knows far more about this stuff than I do.

 

Hope this helps.