Sound Card With Line-out To Run Laptop To Car Receiver??

[stevaside]

My car stereo has a aux jack but if I run a cable from the laptop's headphone out to it it sounds like crap. From what I understand I need an external soundcard with a line-out. I can't seem to find any after searching all over the internet. Just surround sound cards that seem to have outputs such as front out, rear out, etc. If someone can help me find one (I'm on a tight budget too so a cheap one would be preferred as long as it does its job) I would greatly appreciate it.

Steve

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[subzero 5,000+ posts]

SAy wut? sounds like your making a mountain out of a mole... you need 3.5mm jack male to male. If it sounds like crap you need to go into the laptop settings and adjust the output. tune the volume down make all setting flat and balanced. And on your deck it might have a AUX line level control. set it to flat and make sure all your other settings are flat as well. then tweek the deck controls only. I know many whom do this and never have the issues you are having. What is the music player program you are using? Lap top brand? OS?

 

[stevaside]

3.5 was the cable I used. Acer Netbook with XP, only tried Windows Media Player and the Ares music player. There was pretty much NO bass and the volume was way too low. I never messed w the settings but had the volume on the netbook all the way up.

 

[SSS 18734 5,000+ posts]

Most laptop sound cards are absolutely terrible. A program with a good codek helps, but no matter the amount of tweaking you do, you'll never be able to achieve the same results a good sound card would.

I've never used a single-output stereo card, but I currently use Native Instrument's Audio 2 DJ - it sounds excellent, is very compact, and has dual stereo outputs. In addition, it's USB-powered. It costs $100 - not sure how much you're trying to spend.