[soccerdude84]

Budget: ~$50
 
I want to plug the RCA out on my tv into my sound card's line-in to use as a mixer but the signal is really weak even with the line-in all the way up (the rca cable is 15 feet), so I just need something to boost the signal before it enters my sound card. I don't need anything fancy, just enough to give me a good volume range.
 
Thanks

 

[grizzlybeast]

for that price it is tough. I would look on ebay at some xduoo stuff or topping etc

 

[soccerdude84]

Would this do the job?
 
http://www.amazon.com/Rolls-HA43-Headphone-Amplifier-Mixer/dp/B00102ZOQC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393141629&sr=8-1&keywords=Rolls+HA43

 

 

[soccerdude84]

So I got the Rolls and it works great by itself (without plugging it into my soundcard) and amplifies the signal quite nicely, but when I plug it into the line-in all I get is static and a really distorted signal.
 
Is this gonna be true for all amps? Do I need to buy a completely different device to make this work?

 

[soccerdude84]

And the reason why I don't want to turn up my windows volume slider is because I'd have to turn down the sliders on everything else, some of which are already really low (10), so I don't want to completely ruin the range.

 

[soccerdude84]

Would I need a pre-amp for this? I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[soccerdude84]

Should I post this on a different forum?

 

[ChavaC]

What soundcard do you have? You should be plugging the amp into a line-out not a line-in.

 

[soccerdude84]

X-Fi XtremeMusic
 
If I plug it into the line-out then I'm just amping everything in the windows mixer, when I only want to amp the line-in, and I can't just turn the others down because some of them are literally on 1 or 2 already.

 

[soccerdude84]

is this the thing I need?
 
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/50-14820

 

[kramer5150]

You could be dealing with an impedance mis-match of some sort.  I had that problem when I was playing around with a Shure SM57... I was trying to plug it into a receiver or something, with no "real" mic preamp.
 
My brother had this problem with either an FM tuner or CD player/deck with a really low line output he used a device similar to the one in your last post to boost the line level.