Sound system with multiple inputs?

[Tehkast]

Evening all, 

 

Sound is for sure not my strong area.

 

Having just moved house time to finally do a bit better then £20 tesco crappy speakers where one didn't even work.

 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEARS back had the logtech z550 I think they were called greate 5.1 system bit sub etc.

 

Broke and never had one since 

 

I know nothing about sound and had this wee switch thing to change from one input to another it suched buzzed etc total pain in arse.

 

I'm happy to spend maybe £200 to get it done better this time my bit points of want are.

 

Good sound ofc but even more so is the ability to have mulitple input sources without need to swap them.

 

How it works at my work desk (work from home) 

 

have my work laptop but also my gaming pc and family sever / nas

 

I want to have sound from both the server and gaming PC to come through the speakers. 

 

Idea being when on work laptop use sound from my server and ofc when on gaming PC just acts on its own.

 

Anyone able to guide me in direction of speakers or sound system or solution?

 

output on gaming PC and server both seem limited to single 2.5mm jack so would need 2 of those or maybe something I'm unaware of need to convert the cables to something else?

 

Any advice would be most welcome thanks.

 

 

[thrasher_565]

to do it you would need a mixer and use analog 

 

but there a program calledVoicemeeter witch can do audio over ethernet.

 

this might work was thinking on getting this but got Voicemeeter working 

Edited November 30, 2025 by thrasher_565

[Omon_Ra]

I'm assuming your primary PC is your gaming rig? You could use RDP if you already have speakers with your gaming PC. Kind of depends on your monitor setup as far as if you're watching videos on your gaming PC, something else playing audio on your server, and then work things as far as how easy it will be to manage all of the application and RDP windows though. But when working, RDP to your gaming rig and server. When not working, RDP to your server from your gaming PC. Audio should pass through via RDP to your main gaming rig.

 

Another option if you're just using your server for content delivery (movies, music, TV shows, etc), is setup Jellyfin, and then you can access all of your media from work or gaming PC via Jellyfin browser window.

 

Personally, multiple audio streams is far too confusing for me though; I can do light background music or a Twitch stream while in a Teams call or something, but my brain can really only focus on one audio thing at a time. But as @thrasher_565 said, the only other way to do this is via a mixer. You can reduce at least one analog input using a mixer with USB. I'm a big fan of the Allen & Heath ZEDi line. But you will need 3.5mm to 1/4 inch adapters, and those are kinda finicky as far as audio quality goes.