Play Your IPod Through Your Windows 7 PC’s Speakers

I do this to hook up sound from Xbox 360. Though it's not 5.1, just stereo.

Well, further in the article is I believe a new feature:
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12354_22-325899-13.html

Or is it not?

eirrikr

@Zencyde: No, this is new. Previously you could passthrough sound from a line-in device to an audio out through the soundcard's built in audio mixer. Windows 7 implements a digital passthrough in the OS's audio layer. So it can take ANY audio input and send it to ANY audio output, not just pairs of inputs and outputs on the same device.

This is really convenient for me since I have multiple sound cards in media machine.

jepzilla

@GazpachoKing: That relies on a sound device's built in output mixer. Windows 7 provides a more generic version- it's a digital passthrough that takes audio input from ANY device and sends it to ANY output.

If all you have is a simple soundcard then this isn't going to be of any use to you, but it is useful for those of us with more complex arrangements.

jepzilla

I recently was at Best Buy and ran into a friend of mine who is the President of the state dental board. He was holding an RCA to RCA 6' cable and explained to me how you could pipe stereo music from the back of the cable box to your own stereo. Wow! (I had to laugh as my biggest puzzle these days is getting cablecard stability on my MediaCenter system with 4 extenders. bwah ha!!)

dmccall

@courtarro: Easy, now. If that's the case you don't want to jump in the boat with him..

liquidnumb

@weendex: Definitely not new news.

Arcking

@weendex: Audio controls continue to be somewhat cryptic and confusing to many people, but for what reason I can't say. I just know half my friends I game online with "have a mic but can't get it to work".

Sometimes the OEM drivers for the mainboard or their soundcard make things worse.

liquidnumb

So, they just changed the label on the line in volume control from 'mute' to 'listen'? That doesn't sound like a new feature.

GazpachoKing

this maybe ok for nOObs.. but you end up not carrying your cable around and sometimes end up messing up the headphone jack et. al.

The only reason I can think that someone might have thought this wouldn't work on previous versions of Windows is because they don't know how to view the volume control panel and unmute the line-in or microphone jack on their PC

This would be perfect to use with the Xbox 360 VGA adapter. I could use my Plantronics .Audio 510s then. :D

@joe18521: That seems very odd to me if you were plugging your ipod into the line-in jack on these PCs. If it wouldn't play audio from your iPod it shouldn't have been able to play audio from anything plugged into that jack.

I understand what others are saying about the line in port for PCs but I've never thought about this for a laptop until this article. My laptop only has a headphones and mic port so I guess I never thought I could do this. If nothing else now I can listen to my Zune on my work laptop without installing software. Good tip/reminder.

tek

@weendex: yeah, I used to listen my Walkman's radio from my Windows 98 computer's speakers a loong while ago

ya a little behind guys

@Zencyde: True, but using the conventional line-in method for users with a 5.1 speaker system can only get sound out from the front speakers. When you use the method described in this article, you get the full surround sound benefit.

bla0802

This does not require windows 7 and you have been able to do this since sound cards had a line in, which was a long time ago. What do you think sound cards have included this for years in anticipation of Windows 7? It never required any additional software either unless you needed to do it with your sound card's drivers, if you don't install the drivers you have no sound so your forced there.

shibathedog

@schdav: I see this is vaguely related because both solutions involve audio-visual components, but I think you're missing the point. You seem to have a cloud of "smug" above you.

You'd be surprised to learn that you could even use a headphone splitter to achieve the same thing. Most people use splitters to be able to listen to a device with two headphones on an airplane, but it could also be used as a connector as well. So you could be watching a boring lecture with an mp3 track playing in the background in the same time. I'm not saying that is what I use it for, but just giving you an example that you could be getting to audio sources from a splitter.

HenryWindies

More interesting (to me at least) is the "play to" feature in the new WMP. You can play music from one machine to any other Win7 machine or supported device on the network. Likewise, it has built-in streaming over the internet for Homegroup machines meaning I can listen to all the music on my home media server while at work and I don't need to install a third party solution like Orb.

Lots of nice little things being included in this release.

JerryA

I believe I did this in XP using my iPod as a Mic maybe. You can also use your computer speaks as a sort of "dock" and play your mp3 player through them. Mine have a special Auxilary input and headphone out on the side.

njven

What does this do to sound quality? How does it work? Does the line-in hardware pass straight to the line-out, or is the audio processed by the cpu and then output through the sound card?

SamburgerHandwich

Is there a way to do this with Macs?

I can plug speakers into my Mac, I can plug my Nintendo into my Mac's line in port, but I cant plug my nintendo into my speakers. I looked all over for a solution to play audio from the Line in through the line out speakers but I couldnt figure it out.

Jordan Ratcliff

@weendex: Windows 95 could do this, too!

radiantchains

in other news, you can watch movies on tv's by plugging in a VCR to the audio/video inputs, or, failing that, the RF input. This is not new.

schdav

lol I do that on Windows XP with no software and no configuration at all.

sujiro

Yes, but the important difference is that now they mention "portable music player" instead of just calling it "line in". Yay! For progress!

SanfordKolder

@downstairs:

That's not the case. Many PCs I've connected my iPod to did not play the audio.

joe18521

@weendex: Agreed. This article is a few years behind.

Zencyde

You've always been able to hear the line in, in the windows Volume Control ever since at least windows 98.

Go to Volume Control, properties, select Line In. Make sure it isn't muted.

If you don't have Volume Control on your system tray, you can get to it through Control Panel > Audio Properties > Volume Tab > Device Volume "Advanced" button.

Voilà!

@Gotlactose: And if I want this as background music to some gaming?

nukee

Ok, I'm confused. Its a line-in jack. Any time you plug audio into the line in jack and play it, it plays.

What am I missing?

downstairs

You can do this in XP anyway, at least I'm able to. If I don't mute the line-in or microphone in Volume Manager then it'll automatically come out of the speakers.
It might just be the drivers I use.
But yeah, neat trick

Josh Davenport

Haha. I love how lh readers have gotten to a point where we keep the writers in chech because we always question a tips usefulness/function.

Anyways, nice tip, but I use a laptop at the moment, so I can easily unplug my speakers from my laptop and into my Zune. And when my speakers are connected to my tv, I just use and auxiliary.

Or you can just pull the line out cable from your computer and plug it into the iPod. I understand this article is for people using internal speakers or cannot readily get to their line out cable, but for laptop users hooked up to an external sound system, this is just a trivial nifty feature.