How do I connect Samsung laptop to external speakers or hi-fi system?

I bought a new Samsung Chronos 7 laptop last year which doesn't have the traditional phono audio outputs. Instead, it has a headphone mini jack socket for headphones and an HDMI socket (which I assume carries both audio and video).

How do I connect such a machine to a hi-fi preamplifier to get decent quality audio playback? Needless to say, my pre-amp does not have a HDMI input (or any digital input for that matter). How do I even attach normal cheap external PC speakers?

David

 

headphone socket single plug split to 2 phono plug > mini jack to twin phono.
ive used it from headphone plug to twin cd mixer out to 1000w speakers and it makes the room move

hdmi is to connect to a tv.

not sure how samsung set up their plugs but you have headphone but do you have mic and a spdif socket next to the headphone socket. on my clevo when i plug a speaker into the mic in it can switch to speaker out and same with the spdif socket.

 

I've just given the headphone output a try using a mini-jack to twin phono adapter. It works, so thanks for that suggestion. Does this mean that the headphone connection is just a standard line level analogue output?

One quirk is that my mini-jack to twin phono adapter has no L and R markings on the phono sockets. So far, I'm don't know if I am hearing the left channel through the right speaker (and vice versa)!

David

 

no idea about your lappy but its worth checking the specification page on the user manual as mine says 7.1CH audio output supported by headphone/mic/spdif & line in jack.

to check which is left or right just plug one phono in at a time and just one side of speaker should play.

 

This if you have analog output


Or this

 

I've checked the specs both in the downloadable user manual and on the Samsung website. No additional information is provided on the HDMI port and the mini jack socket is simply described as "Headphone out / Mic-in Combo". There are no other audio-related ports.

Your suggested channel checking procedure for my adapter seems flawed to my eyes. I already know where the signal is headed from my stereo phono cable onwards but I can't see how I can tell the difference between the right channel signal being sent to the right speaker versus the left channel signal being sent to the right speaker. Am I missing something? Surely I need to be able to recognise the difference in the music itself?

David

 

it was just a guess as ive never had to check this before so tbh i have no idea which the best way to check what you want to know.
ive run my lappys through various amps and mixers ranging from 1000w to 25,000w in a stadium and have never had a problem just using the single headphone socket for output.
sorry i cant advise anymore. too technical for me

 

Correct.

The headphone connection is an "analogue" output that provides stereo music. But in order to adequately drive headphones, it has to be more than just a "line level" output. See: Line level - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For better stereo music, use a stereo player, like any of the 3rd party stereo music players, a good free one being the free foobar2000 (found at foobar2000 ) with it's digital output via USB connector, to say your receiver connected with a USB 2 connector/cable (USB 3 connectors are usually OK with USB 2 cables which can be longer length than USB 3).

Every modern laptop has at least a few USB 2 connectors.

USB is a digital multi-purpose bus which almost all current laptops have supporting audio chips to permit the transfer of a digital music stream such as .mp3 stereo music files, or lossless stereo files like .flac and .wav

For more info see Digital audio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

My "realtek" sound manager can test and yours also I would guess. Certainly free third party left/right test sounds. Even test with an app. Say WinAmp play with the slider is it working?. It has a slider for left right. If I slide all left and the right is what I hear on the stereo I guess I would reverse the RCA plugs from the 1/8" to RCA. But the color coding tells us which is right or left? I think. Or how else would headphones work as the 1/8" male input plugs in and no option to change at headphones. Also consider regarding your confusion on the left/right thing. There is and must be standardization. I mean on my external like on headphones (I can't switch/change anything) I can do a 1/8" male socket out to 1/8" male socket in so it must be left/right standardized I would think.

Looked up, if RCA from stereo 1/8" jack red is right white is left/mono. Does that resolve. Or am I really not getting the issue here? I am not an expert on high end audio or systems.

That was only info for the analog socket on the notebook. The USB as was mentioned above might be the preferred, I don't know this stuff. I do use USB for my external speaker and sounds good to me.

 

That Wiki article seems to approve the use of a headphone output for connection to a line-level input even though it is a higher level signal, so that is encouraging.

I'm aware of Foobar, but currently use JRiver Media Center, which is a very capable bit of software.

I don't possess any hi-fi kit that takes a USB digital input though I am aware of async USB DACs being available across a very wide spectrum of cost. However, I've no idea how much you have to spend on an external DAC to get something better than the DAC contained inside the PC. I guess one advantage of taking a digital output from the laptop to an external DAC is that you might be avoiding some of the electromagnetic noise present inside any PC.

David

 

Your responses have been very useful. With all that amplification I think you would have heard any undesirable side effects of using the headphone output.

I wonder whether my wife would let me install a 25,000w amp in our living room...

David

 

I have now resolved the problem with my adapter that has a mini-jack plug at one end and a pair of phono sockets at the other (but lacks any colour coding of these sockets).

A search for a suitable software tool found that JRiver Media Center on my laptop has a room correction facility. This let me make left/right balance changes, which allowed me to work out which phono socket was for the right channel and which was for the left.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions.

David

 

glad i could help in some way.
25k in a house is not advisable due to loss of blood through the ears. ive tried it many moons ago. eight 18" jbl subs do make a lovely sound though. added to the sixteen 15" bass and also mids and tops. ohh i do miss my DJ days.
even my active fbt pro 500w each speakers are great for gaming but im not sure my neighbours would agree.

 

JRiver Media Center is excellent, and it does a wider variety of useful thing than Foobar does.

People do this disconnect when "DAC" is mentioned. An ordinary home receiver is an external DAC.

Just run an adequately long USB cable from your laptop to a USB input on your home receiver. The receiver will have the smarts to decode the digital music stream.

 

25,000w? What? I can't hear you. 100w Marshall stack will make your ears bleed. Good to hear you resolved.

 

As I said in the text you quoted from one of my earlier posts, I don't possess ANY hi-fi kit that takes a USB digital input.I think such inputs only appeared on amplifiers and receivers fairly recently. Both my hi-fi stereo system and my AV amp are a few years old.

David

 

Then you are stuck with using that analog output from your laptop.

It's pretty simple: you get better sound from a laptop into a "hi-fi system" (from the title you chose) when you use a digital output from the laptop.

Cheap (but still decent) receivers ($200, and even lower used) that have USB input connectors (as well as other digital input connectors like HDMI and/or RCA coax (S/PDIF) and/or optical (S/PDIF)) have been around for more than "a few years"

The one digital connector that almost all recent laptops have is USB.

Go USB, as that's where the meat and potatoes are at for laptop sound.

 

I must admit that I was using the term 'a few years' a little loosely. I've just checked and my AV amp was bought 10 years ago, while my separate stereo system is even older. I tend to buy fairly expensive kit and keep it a long time. My computers are replaced much more frequently than my hi-fi equipment. I'm more of a music lover than a h-fi nut.

BTW, you commented on my use of the term "hi-fi system". Is such terminology no longer used in the USA?

David

 

Possibly he's just pedantic Have you thought about a wireless USB audio setup like the Arcam rDAC?

Arcam rDAC KW with rWave | Wireless DAC | Richer Sounds

Or you could look at the rBlink also from Arcam, plus say a Creative BT-D1 Apt-X Bluetooth dongle.

There wouldn't be a huge difference in price I'm thinking, but the latter will give you more options for playback from other devices such as an iPad with the appropriate Apt-X dongle - or indeed anything else with Bluetooth (since the rBlink should talk regular SBC as well as Apt-X). I'm not sure if the Apt-X implementations are 'cd quality compressed' or lossless (since the Apt-X specs has provision for both). I'd recommend doing homework to find out as I've no experience of using these.

My own solution for wireless decent audio from a computer source was carpet-bombing my homes with Sonos. Works well, can recommend, no laptop required (though a server is, if you want to play back a locally stored library - and an iPad or two wouldn't go amiss either). Despite the added expense I'd say this is, setup and usability wise, a wife-friendly solution as well - whereas I doubt messing around with j.River Media Center on a laptop is.


Though in fact, j.River runs a fair bit of my audio setup as well: I even have an instance up in my cloud with my music and video library hosted in my cloud servers so that I can use a client copy of j.River as well as 3rd party mobile apps to play back my owned library of music and video wherever I am with sufficient bandwidth. j.River is one of the few pieces of software which will actually do this all the way up to DSD, should you happen to own a portable DSD DAC

 

The reason for my original post is that I was due to give a talk to a classical music society last Friday and wanted to use my laptop as a source for a couple of tracks. The day I posted was the first day I had ever considered how I might use my laptop in this way and I was surprised that it did not appear to have suitable audio outputs. MrDJ's suggestion to use the headphone output provided a satisfactory solution for that occasion.

As a separate matter, over the past month or so I have been looking closely at an audiophile solution for computer-based music but my laptop was not expected to be part of that solution. If I end up using JRiver Media Center, it would run on my main PC (which is located in our living room and is on all the time I am awake). Eventually, my music FLAC files will probably be stored on a NAS box (I've already ripped over 120 of my CDs). The big question still to be decided is whether I buy a streamer or a DAC (Naim, for example, sell both). Of course, one advantage of a DAC would be that it could be used with my laptop when I give music talks away from home but that only happens once a year.

There are many ways of skinning this cat and sorting out all the pros and cons is not proving an easy task! I keep on reading recommendations for products I've never heard of from very small companies (though Arcam is not in that category). Your reference to Apt-X is yet another bit of technology I've never come across before. I've been using Wikipedia a lot recently...

As you say, another issue is the question of whether any solution is wife-friendly. I haven't tested mine yet for a reaction to the JRiver MC interface but I'm hoping to configure it in such a way as to be fairly easy for a technophobe.

David

 

Well - the danger with computer audio is that you could end up needlessly overcomplicating things for what you want to achieve in the end. Any system with a computer is going to gain some complexity and what you have to reconcile is complexity vs convenience.

Personally, for casual listening even on a decent system I just crank up Sonos - the Connect (ZP90) is basically a peer-to-peer-wifi wireless DAC, and the Play:5's in e.g. my kitchens are wireless speakers.

I have iPads everywhere which controls not only Sonos but also the lighting, drapes, the TV/media stuff, etc.(Those features courtesy of Crestron and other related controller makers)

In terms of storage I have a Windows Server in each home running as the local media storage bridgehead, and each server runs middleware to sync with my SAN in the cloud - so that any changes I make to the library anywhere is synced across the whole setup (and my cloud-resident copy of j.River for mobile streaming use picks up all media directly from the SAN). It's far from simple, but it's reliable complexity (it's basically all enterprise-level tech) allied to a simple front end (Sonos + Crestron).

I do have j.River running in server mode in the LAN as well, but I actually rarely use it when sitting down to listen. It's more often I'll be working in the home office and be listening there - a setup like that is just too 'computery' to use in the living room IMO.

I really would suggest taking a long hard look at Sonos. If your stuff is 16-bit-44.1khz FLAC then there's no issue with using it (they don't support high-res FLACs).

 

That's an interesting linguistic question. Namely what term does today's college going crowd use? I'm retired, so have no clue, as I don't frequent colleges.

But I digress.

As far as I know, in the USA today, "hi-fi system" is still a widely used term for all age groups.

And yes, I'm well aware that UK slang is very different from USA slang.

IMO the main influence, of modern hi-fi terms, continues to be 5.1 movies. But perhaps more recently Apple with their iPod/iPhone/iPad, and Bose with their smart marketing and packaging, are coming up with new terms?

I see that Vogelbung has made some suggestions. He can spend up a storm in nothing flat and likes to banter.

The least expensive way I know of to get good sound by connecting any laptop "to external speakers or hi-fi system" is to transfer the sound in digital format; namely run a USB cable from the laptop to an inexpensive receiver that has a USB input connector.

If you want a mobile solution, do as I did and buy 3' mini USB cable w/ Centrance DACport together with either headphones or iems.

For iems, see the recent long thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/accessories/715087-what-best-ear-headphones-under-500-dollars.html

If your current home music system equipment doesn't have a USB input connector, consider buying an inexpensive receiver.

Or if the sky is the limit, then follow Vogelbung's suggestions.

 

I wouldn't consign me to just the sky's your limit options.

The difference between someone who only goes for the lowest-end solution and someone who buys everything he likes the look of is that the latter has relevant experience to be able to say "spend a bit more and get something that actually works better than the lowest-common-denominator stuff".

... as you might recently have discovered