Can my 360 use my laptop speakers?

May 9, 2008 10:57 PM

How do I get my Xbox 360 to use my laptop speakers?

I just bought a 360 and a VGA adapter cable. I have an external LCD monitor that I've hooked the xbox up to with no problem. But now I am trying to figure out how the heck I am supposed to get sound. I tried plugging the red and white cords with the small adapter into my microphone port and selected line in but to no luck. Is there something I am doing wrong or is this just not even possible?

posted by MostHolyPorcine to Technology (5 answers total)

This should be working. Assuming that all the various cords and adapters and attached to each other properly, the issue is likely with how your computer is working. When you say you "selected" line-in, what do you mean?

You'll need some sort of program that 'plays' your line-in input. I used to use Winamp with a line-in plugin to do things like this, but I haven't used Windows for a while. If you're using Windows XP or earlier, you could run sndrec32.exe and hit "record" to hear the sound from your line-in, but this would also create a recording that would get pretty large pretty fast.

Tell us more about your laptop and what you've tried so far?
posted by chudmonkey at 12:44 AM on May 10, 2008

Is your laptop a Mac or a Windows PC?

In Windows there's a way using the default Volume control to play the Line-In out through the speaker ("Input Monitor"?).

For Mac OS X there's Line-In — you'll have to adjust the input gain in the Audio preference pane. Before I found it I was using a PyObj-C application of my own invention (but it would crash sometimes in clipping situations).
posted by blasdelf at 12:47 AM on May 10, 2008

so the speakers are built into the computer? or the monitor? i don't understand how they work

do you have a link to the model of your computer?
posted by 0bvious at 5:01 AM on May 10, 2008

if you have an external lcd monitor then why do you want to plug your xbox into your laptop? you will get much better sound from a separate set of speakers and then you won't need the laptop at all.
posted by 0bvious at 5:06 AM on May 10, 2008

Response by poster: Late update, but I thought I'd share the solution for prosperity...

Trying to get sound out of my laptop speakers just wasn't working, so I went out an bought a very cheap stereo that accepts auxilary sources. Works fine and dandy, and the sound from the stereo is a hell of a lot better than the sound from my laptop!
posted by MostHolyPorcine at 6:50 AM on June 15, 2008