Speaker Wire to RCA Cable? (1 Viewer)

[Tom Scholfield]

I am trying to find a cable that goes from either bare speaker wire or like banana plugs or something to an RCA male connector. I know they are available at Radio Shack, but I would prefer something of a little higher quality, can someone please help me out!

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Why, may I ask, are you trying to do this? This seems frought with danger if you don't know exactly what you're doing. RCA connections are usually line-level connections (I've run across one VERY old sears-brand all-in-one stereo that used RCA connectors on the speaker connectors, but this is not the norm at all), whereas speaker-connections are amplified. Running high-power, amplified signals into an rca line-level input could fry your equipment. Vice versa wouldn't provide anywhere enough power.

 

[Tom Scholfield]

I am actually trying to use an old dolby pro logic decoder to decode the height channel. By taking the front center and back center out of my newer reciever and into the pro logic reciever, eventually decoding the height channel as the matrixed center channel of the front and rear center (which the pro logic decoder would consider a stereo source) in a prologic system

 

[John Garcia]

Radio shack will carry it. It's called a speaker lever to line level converter.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

hmm, it would be better to use the pre-outs of your main receiver, and run those to the pro-logic receiver instead.

I'm not aware of any purposelly encoded height channel, though, and from my recollection, it would be encoded across the surrounds, out of phase.

 

[Tom Scholfield]

the first film to have the height channel encoded was We Were Soldiers, Starring Mel Gibson, It was covered in Widescreen Review. I know I could go to Radio Shack, but I was hoping for a little bit better quality, also my main reciever does not have preouts, only speaker output

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

I know I could go to Radio Shack, but I was hoping for a little bit better quality...

There’s not really a “quality” issue here, Tom. The line-level converter simply pads down the high-level speaker outputs to a useable line-level signal. It’s nothing but a resistor network. But if you really want something “better,” look to the car audio world.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Tom Scholfield]

so all speaker level to line level converters are pretty much the same, whether it is for mobile audio or for possible home audio use?

 

[Anthony_I]

Parts express has exactly what your looking for, i also need one, and it is a converter that downconverts the speaker level to line level.

I dont know hte part numbers but htey have to versions, a simple one which is about $6 and basically just a cable with resistors or whatever to convert the signal (but only rated at about 15W) and another one which is about $60 and more powerful.

 

[Adam Demuth]

Correct, although for mobile audio use, they will be powered by ~12VDC, vs home use - 120VAC mains. I really don't know anything about power consumption of mobile audio line-level convertors, though it couldn't be too much. A decent current wall wart convertor may be able to power one. If that won't cut the mustard, a computer power supply would be more than able to supply enough current (although some PC PS's tend to have quite a bit of electronic "noise" as well as the cooling fan can make alot of audible noise)

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Correct, although for mobile audio use, they will be powered by ~12VDC, vs home use - 120VAC mains.

Hmm, the only ones I've ever seen were passive devices.




Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Adam Demuth]

Hmm, the only ones I've ever seen were passive devices.

My mistake, I could have sworn I hooked up power to the line level converter in my car. Upon closer inspection, however, I see that I didn't.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Too bad - I prefer active devices to passive any day.