Car Radio for Powered PC Speakers
Here’s a thing I use for sound for my desktop. It’s not a typical set of powered satellite speakers. No, I use a car stereo. Specifically, a Jensen CD6112 the someone gave me. Overall, it’s a good little radio. Any of them will do with the only requirement is a auxiliary input of some kind. 3.5mm or RCA. It sits in a box dad made a long time ago for the purpose of having a home made weather radio during the event of a severe storm. I re-purposed it several years ago for my computer. It had a previously had a radio that could tune to the weather channels but only had a cassette player and FM/AM tuners. That worked for a while till the sound quality got annoying so I installed the Jensen from my old truck that I had no use for. Details I’m not going into.
Anyhow, so I got a box with the radio in it. Now, power is simple. Power comes from a standard 12v 5A brick that is always on. There’s a couple 40w 3-way satalite speakers for sound and wired to the front channels only of the radio. I have a simple antenna that was originally screwed into the box just kinda draped across my door frame. It’s been hanging just fine for years.
Audio from the computer runs thru a 3.5mm standard cable into a kvm and out that to the radio’s rear RCA plugs.
The interesting bit, imo, is how I wired it to turn on. First, there is a 5v relay being powered by my PC that is wired in series of a switch hanging below my secondary monitor. The purpose being is when the switch is on, the radio turns on/off with the computer but I can still turn off the radio when the computer is still on. There is a secondary switch in the box that bypasses both switch+relay, essentially wired in parallel, in case I wanted to play the radio without the computer.
And that is that. To me it’s simple setup. :)
Oh, the sound quality is still better than most pre-built setups you’d get in a electronics store imo. That could be just the speakers themselves but still. They get loud and bassy without the need of any kind of sub. I set the EQ to -2 Treble, +3 Bass.
Cue All About Dat Bass song