External Sound Card?

[aceizace]

Hey there,

I'm thinking of getting some new speakers. Specifically I'm thinking of getting the Logitech z5500. This has 3 inputs, which is lucky because I have 3 things I want to plug in, my DVD player, my Xbox 360 and my Laptop. So the Xbox can have the optical input, the DVD player can have the 3.5mm jacks, however that leaves me with a coax input and a laptop with just a normal 3.5mm jack output.

So I'm thinking I'm probably going to need an external sound card right? Even if it were possible to plug a cable into the headphone port of my laptop and the coax on the speakers, this wouldn't be surround sound, am I correct? However, a quick look only seems to turn up external sound cards that have three 3.5mm outputs (sorry, I don't know if there's a better name for these). Does anyone know of any external sound cards that have coax output? I'm guessing it'll be usb to connect to the laptop. If not, is it possible to get a cable that'll convert the 3 3.5mm jacks to coax?

Thanks very much,
Andrew

 

[RHochstenbach]

is it possible to get a cable that'll convert the 3 3.5mm jacks to coax?

Do you mean this kind of converter plug? You could connect these to your soundcard, so you can connect audio jacks to it.

 

[aceizace]

I can't really tell because the picture is dark, but that looks like composite audio to me, like the ones on the right hand side of this picture: http://www.logicsupply.com/images/photos/cables/RCAAudio_big.jpg. The sort of thing I'm looking for would have to convert into coax, like in the second from right here: http://www.hardware.no/tester/lyd/logitech-x530-vs-z-5500/z5500-innganger.jpg (actually that's model of speaker I'm looking at).

 

[aceizace]

It turns out that my DVD player has a coaxial output, so I can use that for the DVD player and use the regular ol' jacks for the laptop.

-
Andy