How do I connect my receiver to my PC? (what cables should I use, etc.)

[ynnoz]

Hello.

I recently bought a pair of Klipsch RP-160M speakers and connected them to my Yamaha R-N602 receiver (that I also recently bought).

Right now I can only use them for Spotify and stuff through my phone with Bluetooth. The plan before I got them though, was to set them up with my PC to listen to music, watch movies and play games, etc.

Now, the only problem is that I don't have much knowledge about this stuff, so I could use some help.

So, to the questions:

1. I'm using the inbuilt soundcard on my Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 motherboard (which is definitely not the best), does that affect sound quality or does soundcard not make a difference?

2. What type of cable should I use? RCA or TOSLINK? Which one produces the best sound quality? (If I were to choose RCA, I guess I would need one of those 3.5mm to 2RCA cables, like this one:

3. My receiver is about 7 meters away from my PC, so I would have to buy an 8+ meter long cable. I would assume the longer the cable is, the worse the sound quality gets? If so, what should I do to prevent that?

I'm sorry if the questions are slightly dumb or if I sound unclear but it's the best I can do

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Go with an optical audio cable (TOSLINK). It is better than RCA cables and the cable length wont matter with an optical cable. Using that adapter on the RCA cables will cause issue with surround sound as well.

I run a similar setup on my rig and have no problems.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Go with an optical audio cable (TOSLINK). It is better than RCA cables and the cable length wont matter with an optical cable. Using that adapter on the RCA cables will cause issue with surround sound as well.

I run a similar setup on my rig and have no problems.

 

[ynnoz]

Wow, that was fast!

Thank you!