Parts for audio shield's line out

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skybrian

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I'm wondering where to find ac97 header and cable for the audio shield's line out? Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms but I'm not finding much.
 
It might depend on what you are trying to connect to the line out pins. Here is an extension cable that has the missing pin:

The pins are arranged in a standard 0.1" layout. Some amplifiers have 3 pins (L, G, and R), such as:

You would use a jumper cable with 3 cables to connect the L-G-R on the audio shield to the amplifier.

If you are using an amplifier that has separate L/G and R/G inputs (or you are using two separate amplifiers), you would use the L/G and R/G pins (the G is the pin above each of the L/R pins):

In this case, you would use two separate jumper cables with 2 cables each.

In both cases, you would need a separate connection to bring out the power. This could be a separate power source. I do wish the audio shield had a break out to bring out VIN and ground for the situations where you are using one power source.
 
For this prototype I want to connect line out to a panel-mount audio jack in a way that I can disconnect the board from the jack without unsoldering it. Sounds like I could just use some regular 0.1" header pins.
 
For this prototype I want to connect line out to a panel-mount audio jack in a way that I can disconnect the board from the jack without unsoldering it. Sounds like I could just use some regular 0.1" header pins.

Yes you can use regular 0.1" header pins. It may make sense to solder wires to a 3.5mm panel mount and use a standard stereo 3.5mm cable, such as:

Or if you are mounting the Teensy + Audio shield on a somewhat larger prototype board, this 3.5mm adapter will work:

You can use regular jumper cables, instead of a 3.5mm audio cable. It depends on what you are hooking it up to.

Or of course, depending on what you are hooking up, just use the headphone jack directly, and don't use the line-out jacks. That way you don't have to solder anything. There is a difference in terms of power and voltage between what the headphone jack delivers and what line-out delivers. So it might be confusing to use the same cable for line-out as for headphone.

For mobile stuff, I tend to use so-called mini-portable speakers, that are designed to plug directly into the headphone jack, and have their own battery. Sometimes these are called 'bomb' or 'hamburger' speakers, because that's what they look like:

The sound isn't the best, but they are cheap and portable. One trouble of these speakers, is they tend to be sold for a while, and then are dropped. But a lot of times, they use non-standard USB cables for charging. I've seen ones that use the old mini-USB plug (i.e. 2-3 generations of USB plug ago) and others that use a small non-USB power jack. While a particular speaker will disappear, there will usually be another one that pops up.

Recently I picked up the monoprice portable speaker that Adafruit added to their catalog (you can get this elsewhere). The speaker is a little larger, but it also is a bit louder, and it uses a standard micro-USB cable for charging:

I've also played around with amplifiers like I mentioned previously, and hooking up various small speakers to them.
 
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