Suggestion to Pipe in Audio from Another PC /w Best Quality

[Bzowk]

Hey Guys - 

 

I was recently given an LG CV241 All-in-One PC which I use alongside my primary workstation in my home office.  It's basically a 22" monitor which runs Chrome OS with option for using an HDMI input for it to be a monitor.  I've been using it as a TV of sorts playing streaming media or media from my Plex server.  As I usually wear headphones, I have the audio from it going into my primary workstation (Windows 10) so that all sound is controlled and comes out of a single device. 

 

The issue is that the only audio output port on the AIO is a headphone jack which I have connected to the line-in of my sound card using a standard male-male 3.5" cable as well as setting my workstation's sound settings to "Always Listen" to the Line In.  This has worked great except that I've got a good amount of background / hissing noise whenever it's physically plugged in.  The hissing doesn't seem to increase / change when media is playing, but drastically does if I power off the AIO device.

 

I'm curious what (if any) solution may exist to eliminate this background noise - at least as much as possible.  My current thought is the actual cable connecting the two, but also considered needing a grounding loop like what I needed to install in my car's audio input system.  I have the volume of the AIO's headphones set to ~90% but have found that adjusting it (even from 0 - 100) doesn't change the level of the background noise.

 

Before purchasing any hardware, I wanted to post to see if anyone else had suggestions or ideas.  

 

Note:  I'm sure one may mention it, so yes; I have considered and tried adding it as another monitor on my primary PC instead, but am not for two reasons.   First, my GPU (980 GTX) has multiple ports, but I already use them all for other monitors and my Oculus Rift and didn't want to have to swap cables every time I wanted to use it.  Also, what I do sometimes requires a lot of resources and if it had to play media at the same time, it can cause issues.

 

What do you think?  Thanks!

[Ralf11]

doesn't it have a USB port?

 

use that an external DAC

 

also use a way to get galvanic isolation on the USB - optical, fiber, etc.

[Bzowk]

Thanks for the reply!

 

Good idea, but wouldn't ChromeOS have to have drivers / compatible drivers in order to use it?  If so, I couldn't find any that weren't of a high price which also included a line out (not headphone) which was compatible after a quick search.  Suggestions?

 

Thanks!

[Bzowk]

I just realized my FIIO X3 2nd Gen can be used as a USB DAC so gave it a go.  It doesn't have drivers, but surprisingly it worked perfectly!

 

Thanks!

[cjf]

My apologies in advance if I'm not following what you are intending to do with this additional PC but I believe you are just trying to get it to output good SQ into your main sound system, is that correct?

 

Going on this assumption, what about running JRiver on your main PC and setting up a DLNA Server on there. Then use a DLNA Client of some flavor on the AIO box which will allow you to stream Audio content over Ethernet to the JRiver DLNA server which is then ultimately connected to your Audio system?

[gridlock74]

The chrome is Linux based so should have the drivers built in? Windows will need a USB 2 driver you install, Linux should work with most USB 2 compliant devices without that extra step.