So recently I got a SCART cable for my Super Famicom and I've been using it on my Sony PVM. Some background information: a couple years ago I built a SCART to 25-pin D-sub connector in order to connect my supergun to my PVM. It works pretty well. Only problem is, I never foresaw that I might need to get audio out of the SCART connection (since my supergun only outputs sound from the amplifier), so there's no audio connector in the cable. So, I have a female to female SCART adapter. My plan was to cannibalize this adapter and connect audio cables in between the 2 female connectors, essentially creating an audio passthrough. The problem is the sound isn't working the way I expected it to. I had the good judgement to test out the pins before I started soldering stuff to make sure they did what I thought they did. What I found didn't make sense. I didn't get any sound out of the left or right audio out pins. When I tested the right audio in pin, I got a very faint audio signal with a loud buzzing on top of it. For one thing, why is sound coming from the audio in? I should think that "out" would mean what is coming out of the device, and "in" means what comes into the device. Secondly, why is it so faint? I couldn't hear anything over my headphones, and when I tried connecting it to my receiver, I had to turn the volume way up to hear it. The buzzing could have something to do with the fact that the left audio cable isn't connected to anything. But then why is the buzzing coming from the right speaker? What's going on here?
I did a similar hack job on an F-to-F SCART adapter, but instead I cut a hole into it to hold a 3.5mm headphone socket. I found that if you wire up audio ground (Pin 4) to the outer metal shield (or Pin 21), you can ensure better compatibility. Just to confirm, Pin 1 is (R), Pin 3 is (L). Also, these adapters are usually directional, so try swapping it round if it doesn't work.
Okay, so apparently I was confused about which pins were which. I had the pinout correct, but I didn't realize that my female to female adapter connects one set of pins on one connector to different pins on the other connector - so basically I cut the wires and then connected wires to them based on the colors rather than the actual pins. Anyway, I have my receiver connected to the right pins now. The problem is still that the audio is extremely faint. I have to turn my receiver up about as loud as it will go in order to hear anything. I can't really think of any explanation for this other than a problem with the SCART cable. I don't think it's an issue with the SF itself, because the sound is fine over an S-Video cable.
