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Can you plug external speakers into an ibook??

CaptainCaveMann

CaptainCaveMann

macrumors 68000
Original poster
ive only seen the one plug in for headphones but is that the same one you use for external speakers on the ibook??
 
CaptainCaveMann said:
ive only seen the one plug in for headphones but is that the same one you use for external speakers on the ibook??
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can plug speakers into it. Beware though, it isn't the greatest way to use external speakers with your ibook. You'll get much better sound with a good usb adapter.
 
grapes911 said:
Yeah, you can plug speakers into it. Beware though, it isn't the greatest way to use external speakers with your ibook. You'll get much better sound with a good usb adapter.
Click to expand...

I would have to disagree on that one. USB was not meant to carry sound, and by using a USB adapter like the iMic, you completely bypass the onboard soundcard and eat up bandwidth and CPU power because of the constant USB usage.

Plugging external speakers into the 'headphone' jack on the ibook (or any other Apple computer) works just fine.
 
Duff-Man says...yes, the headphone output should do just fine with most external powered speaker systems - no need for some external USB thing unless you need some extra features...oh yeah!
 
speakers

you should try airport express, that rocks!

you will need to have osX10.3. the sound to my ears is great and it is so convenient. you will listen to more music, that i am sure.

🙂
 
Jigglelicious said:
I would have to disagree on that one. USB was not meant to carry sound, and by using a USB adapter like the iMic, you completely bypass the onboard soundcard and eat up bandwidth and CPU power because of the constant USB usage.

Plugging external speakers into the 'headphone' jack on the ibook (or any other Apple computer) works just fine.
Click to expand...

I think the ibook is only 3.1 sound or something. If you have say 6.1 speakers the ibook won't send sound correctly to all of them. There are usb devices (I know they use cpu cycles) that will allow you to use 6.1 sound. I don't know what sound the imac handles up too. I have 4.1 speakers I connect to my ibook. They sound fine, but I don't feel like i get true surround sound. What comes out of my fronts seems to be exactly what comes out of my rears. I also have a set of identicaly 4.1 speakers that I use on my pc and the sound much better.
 
CaptainCaveMann said:
ive only seen the one plug in for headphones but is that the same one you use for external speakers on the ibook??
Click to expand...

I have Harmon Kardon's Soundsticks, and while they use USB, they have great sound!

Another downside to USB is that it doesn't always redirect the system sound output to USB automatically. Sometimes after plugging in the Soundsticks I have to go into System Prefs and select the Soundsticks as the sound output. I assume this would be more transparent with regular speakers.
 
CaptainCaveMann said:
does the powerbook use the same sound card as the ibook or do speakers through the powerbook sound better??
Click to expand...

Apple has never released any specs, or spoken much about their sound hardware. For all anyone knows, the sound chip they use has been the same for the past 8 years. In other words, yes, the ibook and the powerbook will sound the same through external speakers.
 
Apple should just start stick Audigy 2s in the PowerMacs. It would speed up games for one thing, because the processor wouldn't have to handle the audio.
 
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