Looking for amplifier or mixer

[Octopuss]

I have Auzentech X-Fi Forte soundcard and Tapco S8 speakers. Currently I connect the speakers with lousy RCA cables, which gives me all kinds of sound distortion. Receiving a SMS is like an assault on my ears. I would like to use some ballanced cabling, but the trouble is that along with standard analog output the soundcard has SPDIF connector and that's it. Sadly the speakers do not support that. They have connectors for either RCA or XLR or TRS. I would like to check whether there is a way to connect them in the way I want.

I am everything but expert about audio, so the description is probably very amateurish-dumb looking.

[VideoRipper]

The XLR-inputs of the speakers are likely balanced, but the (3.5mm?) output

of the soundcard is un-balanced, so that's not going to work without a balun.

I'm not familiar with the models you mention, so I don't know how good these

speakers are in rejecting outside signals.

The cables you'll generally find are cheap and badly shielded and the signals

sent out from your mobile will indeed give you interference.

If you want to go the analog way: get yourself a good quality (and properly shielded)

3.5mm jack to RCA-cable (those really expensive ones) and keep them as short

as possible (and preferably not a multitude of the GSM-band wavelength; although I only have experience

with beating, low frequency, HF signals).

I prefer to do everything digitally and have attached my Club Agrippa over

optical S/P-DIF to an external professional DA-convertor and amplifier, but

I can imagine that would be a bit over the top for you

Last option is to ban all mobile phones within a 10m (30 feet) or so radius

Greetz,

Peter.

[Tripredacus]

I believe that the cell phone SMS signal actually interferes with the speaker itself, and no amount of wire shielding will make a difference. That is just my experience at testing different audio cables when I used to have a phone like that.

[Octopuss]

The XLR-inputs of the speakers are likely balanced, but the (3.5mm?) output

of the soundcard is un-balanced, so that's not going to work without a balun.

I'm not familiar with the models you mention, so I don't know how good these

speakers are in rejecting outside signals.

The cables you'll generally find are cheap and badly shielded and the signals

sent out from your mobile will indeed give you interference.

If you want to go the analog way: get yourself a good quality (and properly shielded)

3.5mm jack to RCA-cable (those really expensive ones) and keep them as short

as possible (and preferably not a multitude of the GSM-band wavelength; although I only have experience

with beating, low frequency, HF signals).

I prefer to do everything digitally and have attached my Club Agrippa over

optical S/P-DIF to an external professional DA-convertor and amplifier, but

I can imagine that would be a bit over the top for you

Both the XLR and TRS inputs are ballanced, right. I found a photo of the back side.

so are you saying that in my case adding some device on the way to the speakers is somewhat pointless? I don't mind analog way as long as the quality of the signal is not getting screwed up.

It all started by me getting annoyed with having to control the volume from Windows, which sucks. Since the speakers are active, there is no point in adding an amplifier, so...

[Sysdll]

As I understand your post you're have two problems, interference from cell phones and distorted sound.

Your sound card and speakers are of good quality and should not distort at normal listening levels.

For the distorted sound I'd first check with headphones plugged into the sound card to make sure the distortion isn't in the original signal. Then try adjusting the computer volume and the speaker volume up and down opposite each other to see if you can find a point with a cleaner signal. I have yet to hear a computer sound card that didn't distort with the software volume control turned all the way up. And I second VideoRippers sugestion to get some good quality cables to go along with the studio monitors.