Need a little less buzz with lot more power...

Greetings dev-dwellers I pose a question for your minds to mull over.

I have a pair of unpowered stereo speakers that were hooked up to an amp until just recently. They use two bare wire RCA inputs and thats all it takes. The amp was unfortunately not mine, and vacated my abode when its owner moved out of the city. Leaving me with a pair of very beautiful sounding, but unpowered, stereo speakers. So I decided to strip a headphone to rca cable of its white and red heads, and clip the wires right into the speakers. However, this produced less then optimal results using my onboard sound.

This little story coupled with my general desire to get rid of that awful background hum that chipset sound seems to deliver. Leads me to my next question, what soundcard has enough juice to power these suckers along with a pair of powered Koss speakers from the mid 90's that look so damn pretty on my desk.

Don't ask me why I need four speakers, I just damn well do. That being said, assault me with your wisdom dev-dwellers!

Typically, the headphone "out" port of a sound card is where you want to attach these. You're going fine that route with the headphone->rca. The "LINE" port of a sound card is a low level signal which requires amplification - not the right port.

Typically, the hum is generated by interference. If you can get rid of the interference, you will not have to buy a new sound card. Almost any sound card (even on board) can amplify speakers on the headphone "out" port up to 8ohm impedence.

They work fine on the headphone port, but the onboard sound isn't capable of providing the power to get the speakers to make much more then a whisper.

you sure you got it plugged in to the right port? There is headphone LINE and headphone OUT, LINE is for amplified(powered) speakers, OUT is for otherwise

Yeup, Just not enough power to give decent volume.

Huh, well, got me then ... Maybe the creative Audigy series would fare better, but I can't guarantee as I don't know that any more power is put through them or not off hand...

For the unpowered speakers you will need to have an external amplifier, your computer soundcard does not have enough power output. You did not say what type of speakers these are, but I estimate (based on other unpowered hi-fi speakers) that you will need 5-10 Watts drive to make them do more than whisper, and much more than that to make the sound level they are capable of handling). Check the soundcard specs for its power output rating, it may be less than 1 Watt.

Hum in audio circuits is most commonly caused by poor grounding, sometimes something broken, sometimes poor design. The only computer audio I have experienced hum with has been a laptop.

You need an amplifier to power those speakers. For fun, could you tell us what they are and describe the amplifier that disappeared with its owner?

HTH,

Ben N1NP

is there a cheap external way to amplify speakers? Ie, signal booster. Something of the like. Barring that, is there a cheap or small amp that someone can suggest I go for?