So I hooked everything up no problem, and finally bought a VGA switch box that lets me just press a button to switch between the xbox and the pc to display on the monitor, however I still have to manually switch the sound between my sound card on the pc, and plugging my speakers into the adapter i got to connect to the red and white wires that came with the xbox360 vga cable. I was hoping someone might know, or even be able to point me in the right direction, how to get the sound to switch or work for both without having to do it manually all the time - thanks!
VGA doesn't carry sound. You will have to switch it manually or get a different switchbox. I am not aware of anything off the shelf that will do what you want.
If you have your tower positioned closely to where the XBox is, you buy a little adapter which you put the audio cables in from the XBox, and on the other end it has your plugs for your PC. I'm not entirely sure what these are called on the shelf, but it would be a bit of a solution.
The switch is called an AV Selector,it uses std RCA for input & output & selector itself can have two or more inputs depending on how many other things you want to attach,you can get adaptor cables from local electronics stores since the comp most likley needs the little headphone jack style at one end while RCA's at the other EDIT:If you have a stereo you could run an RCA lead to the aux,video or cd input to get even better sound,if it has a decent sub you'll make the neighbors think those gun shots are at them mwaaaaaaa
Here's what i use, snippet from here ~ http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/770594/4669279 Here's what i use to enable switching of my Logitech X-230 speakers between an xbox 360 (connected to TV via HDMI) and an old type xbox and a laptop. The xbox 360 outputs sound thru the TV speakers and thru the leads so it works very well. It's just a cheapy 3-way RCA audio switch and an RCA adapter lead, about £5.00 inc P&P from eBay. I don't use the yellow video connection, this is just a cheapy method for audio switching only. I also use the same type of switch and leads to switch another set of X-230's (doesn't matter what sort of speakers or headphones as the output from the speakers or any headphones is a standard 3.5mm male audio connector) between an xbox 360 (connected to TV via Component cables) and old type xbox and a PC. These switches can be bought standalone or with the odd cable supplied. I buy them standalone and add my own cables. The lead below goes to a PC audio-out socket, use one of these for each PC (it connects to the front of the RCA switch) ~ The lead below goes to a games console (it connects to the front of the RCA switch) ~ The lead below goes from the back of the RCA switch to the output from the speaker system ~
hmmm that looks like it should work. is that pic at the bottom with the red and black audio cables? I think I'd just need a cable that turns my male green plug from the speakers into male red and white plugs for the rca switcher's output, correct?
Looks like that adapter only supports composite, which will be pretty poor image quality compared to the VGA you were going to use.
Good question, but on the one 360 i do use component as the TV doesn't have HDMI, hence why i need the sound. The other 360 is connected to a HDMI tv, sometimes the (external) speakers are on, sometimes not, but yes the sound comes thru HDMI either way. It's just for convenenience. Going to replace the audio lead picture above with one that doesn't have the yellow video lead, it should make more sense then
LOL no it's ok, i hadn't realised that the pictures weren't quite correct. Just trying to find smaller, clearer ones. As i say it's only a cheapy solution, it works a treat though, i always found 2 desktop speaker systems to be a pain.
I never found any problem with cheap audio adapters. Video is a different story, but usually stuff like that doesn't have any appreciable impact on the sound quality. Even the dodgy £3.50 5m 2-phono cable I had sounded fine, but the right channel kept dropping out.
