Help putting together Home audio

[jocab64]

I have an idea to use a my 160 gb apple tv for home audio but was looking to bounce some ideas off people and see if what I'm thinking is possible and makes sense. Basically I'd like to hook my apple tv into an audio switcher that will then be connected to a couple of different pairs of speakers. I don't have a receiver in this location so I'd like to just go with some powered computer speakers. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Apple TV > Rca connecter > Speakers

My plan is to cut the speaker wires after the volume/power module and feed those into an audio switcher then wire the speaker back into the audio switcher and wire up whatever other speakers I'd like into the remaining spots.

So the question I have here is, is it as simple as cutting off the 3.5mm jack and connecting the corresponding wires into the audio switcher? Is there an easier/better way to do this?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[wodeh]

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, but if you mean the "audio switcher" has screw terminals which you wrap the bared wire around and tighten... Then it sounds like a bad, bad idea. Such connections are for passive speakers, and provide a fair amount of power also. Your already-powered computer speakers will require an un-amplified line level input or, at a pinch, anything you might expect to come out of a 3.5mm Jack.

I'm guessing the switcher doesn't do any amplification, though?

Sounds like you just need a couple of female to female RCA Y connectors/splitters to send audio from the Apple TV to both sets of speakers. Then just turn on one or both to get sound.

I've use these kinds of setups to let me simultaneously monitor and record a composite video/audio feed, so if the leaping assumptions I have made about your setup are correct, they should serve you well.

Edit: found an image: