The PC that I use for most of my desktop work (actually it’s a Mac), is hooked up to an old amplifier and speakers in my den, cascaded from the living room when my wife made me replace my lovely 19″ hi-fi equipment (or “black loud crap” as she so tastefully referred to it) with something small and silver (or “girly” as I call it).

It sounds great (at least to me – an audiophile will probably tell me that 192k MP3s can never sound great) but has a drawback in that my den/office is opposite the childrens’ bedrooms and next to ours. This means that the lovely rich sounds which come through the amp run the risk of disturbing our sleep (and I have to remember to turn off the amp, lest an incoming e-mail – probably spam – wakes one of us in the night).

This was proving inconvenient (I kept forgetting), so yesterday I bought a cheap 3.5mm stereo 2-1 adapter from Maplin and split the audio output from the PC to run to both the amplifier (rich, loud, quality sound) and the monitor speakers (small, tinny sound) – I could have used wireless headphones instead, but I don’t have any. Now I can hear the general PC system noises on the small speakers and when we’re all up and about I can turn on the amp to hear everything properly (the monitor speakers are still there, but the richer sound from the main speakers largely cancels them out – they effectively become repeaters). Now all I have to do is remember to turn off the amp when I leave the room…