Powering Unpowered Stereo Speakers

[ShadoX]

Hi - I wonder if you guys can help me

My old stero blew up a month or so ago and since then i've had its 2 speakers just sitting on the self collecting dust (not connected to anything)

These were unpowered speakers, since they were powered by the Stereo, i want to hook them up to my PC but obviously they'll need to be powered first to get any noise

Does anyone know how i can do this?

They did have a bare wire connection (no plugs, they were clipped in) but i've bought connectors for the ends and put them on (RCA i believe their called - their not the small headphone sized one - next step up, you see all the stereos use them)

Heres my current setup - I'm using my MoBo's onboard sound (its a Gigabyte 8i915p Duo motherboard) which has 8 channel HD Audio using a C-Media 9880 Chip.

I have a set of "Hercules XPS 210" speakers (their first set in this review ).

Really the only fast cheap way i can see of powering them is getting a "Splitter", putting it into the back of the sub/amp of the above speaker set - then attaching the say left Stereo speaker and the left Hercules speaker (repeat for right) - Main question is, if i do this does it draw any more power or anything that may/will burn out the sub (or the amp inside the sub)? Or will all the speakers just be generally lower in volume?

I realise doing it this way will just replicate the same left and right channels that i currently have, i'd love to hook it up as surround using a different channel from the 8ch audio but i dunno if i can do this without buying a $100+ powered external box

Any help would be fantastic - Thanks :-?

[SomeDude]

there is no way to power em, unless you have an amp. for example, if you had a old set of computer speakers with an amp, then u could disconnect the speakers from the amp, and hook ur stereo speakers to it and even then, you wouldn not have much pushing the speakers, and the amp would eventualy blow because there only meant for the speakers they come with

[royphil345]

If you hook up two speakers to the output from your subwoofer meant for one speaker...  You'll be dangerously lowering the resistance / impedance load of the speaker(s). This is very hard on amplifiers. Amp in the sub probably wouldn't last long.

Best way to power the speakers would be with an old stereo receiver or integrated amplifier you could probably find for cheap. You could hook the sound card out to an input on the receiver using a stereo 1/8" plug to two RCA plugs adapter. Plug your extra speakers into the speaker outputs on the receiver. Then, plug your current computer speaker setup into a set of tape-monitor outputs on the receiver, again using the same type of adapter. Would enable using all the speakers at the same time while being powered separately. Might even allow for another set of unpowered speakers to be used if the receiver has A and B speaker outputs.

[ShadoX]

Ok thanks guys

Might search around for an old stereo then to power them  

[SomeDude]

i have an old 1993 sharp 2.0 stereo, hooked up to two 3 way 60w pioneers, and two two way 160w panasonics, and the stereo puts out more bass than my speakers can handle, so alot of times, old stereos are good.