Monitor Speaker connectivity question

[tuningforksmakemesmile]

Hello I am new to the audiophile world.

I am trying to figure out the best way to connect my Monitor Speakers to my labtop. My Monitors(Yamaha HS50M) have a XLR and 1/4th output.

but all i have on my labtop is firewire, usb, and the 1/8th headphone input.

besides a digital mixer is there anything i could buy that will connect the monitors to the laptop via usb or firewire?

[DAS]

Those connectors on your speakers are inputs, not outputs...but we know what you meant. ;-)

Your best bet is to buy a cable that goes from stereo 1/8th inch to two mono 1/4 inch connectors. That should work fine.

[tuningforksmakemesmile]

Wouldn't that create a precariously high load for the headphone jack on my labtop.

[DAS]

If the speakers were not powered, and you were trying to drive a speaker from a headphone amp I might be a little concerned, but those are powered speakers, which means that when you plug into them you are actually connecting the headphone amp to a line level input to an amplifier. This is not ideal, but it will work fine. The input impedance to that amp is probably something like 10k ohms (just a guess), which definitely will not load down your headphone amp at all. Lots of people hook their stuff up this way. If by "high load" you mean a high impedance, then, yes 10k ohms is a very high impedance, but it will not bother the little amp in your laptop. It's too low an impedance you'd want to worry more about.