coaxial ports how and why ?

leftwinger57

Most of you know that I'm pretty computer illiterate. I see these single orange ports on both my Yamaha RX-V665 avr and what I think is a corresponding orange jack on the back of my 22 y/o Gateway desk top. I tried taking one of my RCA runs which is taken off a very convoluted way of picking up I-Net radio. With using a mini plug Y-splitter from the headphone jack > dual RCA cable runs > audio 2 of my avr this works and worked from day one. Now I take a single RCA cable run it into that orange port of both my avr and computer and get nothing, and yes I know which cable is which. All of what's in that section of my avr are audio outs per page 15 of the owners manual. Since I know nothing about computers I don't know if it's out or in and why no tunes. Yes I went through all the settings and nothing. I have no problems w/ the Y splitter but just thinking of getting an audio in with one cable instead of 2 would make more sense, if it worked. In general what are those orange ports used for if not what I want to use them for ?...

tonyb

22 year old Gateway desktop ?? lmao !! You might as well be chiseling on a stone tablet.

Considering your system is working as is....leave it alone, it's a miracle the way it is now with everything you have hooked up. Hard to say what the port is for without a pic or model number of the 'puter. I'm guessing it was either a video port or a digital coax port which if your 'puter is 22 years old, I don't even think they had those back then.

leftwinger57

This is a hand me down from my nephew who of course went to lap tops and smart phones while I have this and a shoe phone ala Get Smart...lol I do have a new hard drive and it's quick and does what I need. Thank GOD I don't need it for any kind of business dealings or spread sheets. Yes, all will be left alone as convoluted as it is.

msg

Lew, can you post a photo?
I remember seeing all kinds of mixed media output stuff on computers over the years. If it's from a sound card, it could be digital audio out. But if it's closer to yellow than orange and from a video section, then it could be a Composite video signal port. If I'm not mistaken, orange is the designation for S/PDIF, or coax/RCA digital audio.

If it is audio, you might have to tell the computer/soundcard to output to that port through the sound card driver/interface. Sometimes you can get to Properties by right-clicking or double-clicking the "speaker" in the System Tray at the bottom right hand corner of your desktop, next to the clock. If not, then get to it through Device Manager or Control Panel.

The other thing you mentioned is that on your AVR those are audio outs you're messing with? In that case, if I understand what you're trying to do, this won't work. It sounds to me like you're trying to use your computer to send internet radio to your AVR's digital coax, is this correct? If so, then this requires digital audio OUT from your computer (kinda like what you're doing with the 3.5mm > RCA cable) to digital audio IN on your AVR, if an available feature on your AVR.

Make sense?

Nightfall

Is the coax port on the AVR and IN or OUT? You might be plugging an audio OUT into another audio OUT. If that is not the case you might have to enable the port on the computer through a proprietary sound application or system settings. I plug my laptop into my Aventage sometimes to watch movies/shows via HDMI and I have to enable HDMI sound through system settings in Ubuntu Linux.