Connecting big ol' speakers?

Hi korcskru,

What you're wanting to do is becoming increasingly popular. I have this setup myself, and it works extremely well.

Basically what you'll need to do is connect your computer to a receiver or regular amplifier, and then connect the speakers to that.

To do this, you'll need a 1/8" to RCA adapter. That'll take the line output from your sound card, and change it into an RCA-type connection that'll go into the auxiliary input on the receiver. Then you'll just connect the speakers to the receiver like you normally would. This way, you can switch it from the computer's input to the FM, or to another input like a TV. It's very convenient.

I hope my description wasn't confusing. To help, here's a link that a really knowledgeable guy at Microsoft wrote to expand on the basic idea: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mce/expert/connect_av.mspx

That was a pretty good description IMO Fox. Basically, get the adapter that Fox mentioned. It will look like the one in the article. Then you will need a receiver, but you don't have to go out and purchase a huge 1200 w receiver, you can get an inexpensive one for like $20 that will do the job. I have a 2.1 setup like Fox described, and my 400 w receiver goes louder than I will ever need.

Yep. The best place to find the ideal inexpensive receiver for this job is a yard sale, pawn shop or thrift shop. There are tons of them to be had for less than 20 dollars, and most of the time you'll get what 30 years ago was really superb- just without the surround sound, 10-different-input advantage of modern receivers- which doesn't matter anyway, since you're only working with 2 channels.

If you're going to be using hi-fi speakers, make sure they're not too close to the CRT monitor as the interference will distort and damage the display (I found out the hard way). LCD monitors don't have this problem, so you're ok if you have one of these.