Calling all Audiophiles!!!

Here is my question. I have a 17 inch imac. I just purchased a LINN Audio system to go along with my computer. I hooked up the speakers using a set of Monster cables to go from the headphone jack to the R/L inputs of the receiver. For some reason while playing music through my computer there is a tremendous amount of distortion (impedence) coming out of these speakers. I used to have a set of soundsticks, which where ok, but now my upgraded speakers currently sound like crap and they are supposed to sound better on a superior level. Any suggestions!?

an easy thing to do would be to clean all the contacts, including inside the headphone jack in the computer with some WD-40. don't drown them in it, just a quick spritz and a wipe with a paper towel. if that doesn't fix it, you can try hooking the speakers up to a CD player or something to check and see if the speakers themselves are defective. if it sounds fine using a CD player or whatever, then i dunno sorry.

I deleted your other thread, please do not cross post.

Try turning the Mac's volume down half way and the reciever's upto where you like it. So the reciever is doing the amplifying - not the headphone amp in the mac.

Ok these areprobably going to sound stupid but Make sure everything is completley plugged in. Also, Make sure their are no monitors or other wires around the wires going from the headphone port to the receiver some of them may be unshielded cables causign distortion.

I had this problem. I had to buy an imic from griffin technologies. http://www.griffintechnology.com/

Sorry, excuse the dumb question but, does the iMac have a Line-Out?

If not, that's your problem: Your setup is only as good as the weakest link - in your case the source with it's headphone out.

Either try the suggestion above, i.e. turn the headphone output on the iMac down quite low and have the amp do the amping!

or get a decent usb line-out device for true audiophile quality.

Hope this helps, if not head over to www.head-fi.org and check out the pc as source forum.

the most recent update of iMacs have audio outs> but the 17 in. he is talking about is the same as mine(only headphone and prospeaker outs) so you need to buy an iMic or similar!