SPDIF PC Port

[smush]

Hi
I'm wanting to hook up my PC and MacBook Pro 2009 to one monitor and one set of speakers. On the monitor I have two HDMI ports at the back so I'm going to plug in a second HDMI cable and connect it to the MacBook as the monitor's OSD Menu let's me select between HDMI ports 1 and 2. The audio is where I get a little confused. At the moment my old Altec speakers are hooked up to my PC with a 3.5mm jack, I've read that splitters are a bad idea but that a switch box should be ok however I cannot find one?

After looking at the back of my Altec box which the speakers are hooked up to (is it called a subwoofer? I don't see any speakers on the big box) it has an SPDIF port so I was thinking of hooking up the MacBook to the speakers using 3.5mm jack and the PC using SPDIF since I have an SPDIF Out port on my motherboard but when I search Amazon for SPDIF cables they don't look like they would fit the port on my motherboard I have attached a picture of the speaker's ports and and the motherboard's I know I'm going wrong but I can't figure it out. Thanks

http://imgur.com/DlS1c4A

http://imgur.com/UP4Qo39

[Mira Yurizaki]

That looks like a "coaxial" S/PDIF port rather than an optical one.

 

As far as a switch box goes... (I have a self-built one that made to switch 5.1 surround sound between two PCs, but feed the line-out of one into the other's line-in, so I could still listen to the other computer. And I don't use it anymore because I don't have the setup I built it for)

[tlink]

you made a picture of optical spdif on your pc, while the cable that you posted is copper spdif. your pc might also have a copper spdif port, it probably looks like a normal audio port.

[smush]

7 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

That looks like a "coaxial" S/PDIF port rather than an optical one.

 

As far as a switch box goes... (I have a self-built one that made to switch 5.1 surround sound between two PCs, but feed the line-out of one into the other's line-in, so I could still listen to the other computer. And I don't use it anymore because I don't have the setup I built it for)

you mean coaxial on the back of the speakers (second link) which is a round port? The one on the back of the PC is different more square

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, smush said:

you mean coaxial on the back of the speakers (second link) which is a round port? The one on the back of the PC is different more square

The one on the PC is optical based. The one on your speakers looks like it uses an RCA cable instead (S/PDIF uses either a fiber optic cable or an RCA one)

[mariushm]

Your motherboard seems to have an OPTICAL OUT digital connection, which means you need an optical cable... see TosLink : https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Digital-Optical-Audio-Toslink/dp/B00NH11H38/

Your motherboard may have a digital coaxial out connection as well but we don't see it in the picture, or you may have a header on the motherboard to which you could connect a cable with the coaxial connector at the end. We don't know what motherboard you have so can't say for sure.

 

Whatever's that gray box, if that's a Digital IN connection, it's for coaxial , which uses a round connector , kinda like the RCA connectors for sound.

 

The coaxial cables use copper wires to transfer data, the TosLink cables use LIGHT through optical fibers so you can't find or buy  cheap adapters to convert between the connector types.