Looking for advice regarding a weird setup

Gaming Audio Casual
1

Hello.

I have: PC, Nintendo Switch, Topping E30 DAC.

Goal: Have audio from both Switch and PC (for discord and other voice) be heard at the same time.

What I have right now: 3.5mm wire going from Switch audio jack to PC motherboard Line In, routing that through Windows’ Listen To in the Sound Control Panel to Optical SPDIF which goes to the DAC.

Why I would like to change: Line In on the PC motherboard has issues because of GPU interference, causing lots of noise (it’s not the worst, but it’s constantly there), and to avoid having to use a Ground Loop Isolator. (There may be other issues stemming from the Switch DAC to Line In ADC that this may solve, but I don’t know if there are any at the moment)

My weird idea: Get a HDMI Audio Extractor to output to a Optical TOSLINK, and get some sort of Optical TOSLINK Line In for the PC, which will then be routed, along with PC sound, to the DAC.

Questions:

  1. Are there any better ways of doing this than what I have described above?

  2. Is it, potentially, worth it?

2

Wouldn’t something like an audio interface be the solution?
I don’t know much about them but yeah.

3

Probably, but that’s a, seemingly, expensive solution, as most audio interfaces that would do what I want are somewhere above 50 dollars. My idea is, roughly, around 40 dollars.

4

The Behrninger U-Phoria UM2 is 33€ here but no idea if that works or how expensive it is where you are.

5

Those inputs are made for microphones and instruments, and, as far as I know, that doesn’t work on something like this. Thanks for the suggestion tho

6

Do you have an interface/soundcard that can take in optical?
If so, then this should work.

When you have two analog signals, the easiest way would be a passive mixer like the ART SplitMix4
The important question for this is how you power your headphones/speakers.

It is a quality of life improvement, so worth it in my books :smiley:

AFAIK the UM2 only has one input that can take line level. Otherwise that would work.

7

I don’t have any such device, at the moment. I am planning to buy one, along with a HDMI Audio Splitter, if this seems to be the easier or better approach.

I only have the Topping E30 DAC and waiting for Topping L30 AMP to arrive.

I don’t have any extra devices of this quality, so a mixer might not work by combining the Switch’s DAC and AMP with this signal. More so, if I ever get higher ohm headphones. I have powered speakers so I’m not too worried there.

8

I am not sure I understand what you want to say.

My proposal is this here:

NSw_E30_L30
NSw_E30_L301920×1080 626 KB

I don’t have much experience with TOSLINK (apart from using it to feed in audio from a CD-player to my computer).
The advantage would be the optical isolating the two electrically.

Advantage of my setup is the “dedicated knob” for volume settings.

9

I see. I hadn’t considered that as a possibility. Thank you for the suggestion.

What I was thinking was more along the lines of using separate DAC and AMP for each device, and then mixing them.

Neither do I, to be fair, but I haven’t found anything that could be problematic, yet.

Seems like a nice extra and I would, kinda, like to have the switch go through the DAC as well, so am still, somewhat leaning towards the optical pass-through.

Plus, according to what I have found, doing this is cheaper.

Given that it’s going through Windows, I can do that there. Unless I am mistaken.

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