help with homemade audio setup

[FishBoy]

Ok, I am trying to set up a speaker system for my iPod, but I don't have an amplifier, or much in-depth sudio experience. My available materials are a 25 watt speaker, iPod, a few old pairs of earbuds which jacks/wires could be salvaged from, a semi-old boombox, and whatever else I can find around my house. Now, SUGGESTIONS!!!!

thanks a lot

[TurboSuper]

Well, for one thing, you'd need more than one speaker for stereo sound

[FishBoy]

Well, for one thing, you'd need more than one speaker for stereo sound

I'm not that electronically challenged. I actually have two of said speakers, I just wanted to try with one first and then hook up the other if it worked.

[TurboSuper]

Oh, well then you need an amp and you'll be good to go.

You could probably salvage the one out of the old boombox.

[FishBoy]

what would I be looking for?

[VH_man]

why not just plug it into the boom box?

im sure theres an Aux in somewhere. Then all you really have to do is attache' and vwala!

your not going to get great sound out of a homemade system unless you spend WAYY more than it costs to get one at the store, depressingly.

[FishBoy]

why not just plug it into the boom box?

im sure theres an Aux in somewhere. Then all you really have to do is attache' and vwala!

your not going to get great sound out of a homemade system unless you spend WAYY more than it costs to get one at the store, depressingly.

Unfortunately the boombox has no auxillary except a headphone jack.

I am going to best buy with a gift card tomorrow, I was just wondering if I could use the old speakers I had without buying anything.

[VH_man]

if you want to be ghetto, And it has a tape deck, Get one of the things that converts an ipod out to a Tape thing.

[TurboSuper]

Yeah, or an FM transmitter, then you could use it with any radio.

[pizlo]

Audio is very simple there are many connectors, but all headphones/speakers work on 2 positives and 2 negative lines. so with some soldering any wires can be adapted, but most speakers (those included I'll bet) require wattage to drive them. I come from some forums where people use portable amps to drive there headphones better. a cheap amp like Cmoy (look it up/ebay) should work, but what you realy need is an integrated stereo amp, that will fix all your problems.

[starman]

You can use a 1/8" stereo phonejack to RCA like this...



You can get one at Walmart or any electronics store. It just breaks the left and right signals from the ear bud jack and onto seperate RCA jacks.

You can then plug in to any standard stereo receiver/jam box Aux or Tape input. You can also plug desktop computer speakers directly into your iPod...probably your quickest solution.

You essentially need an external amplifier and speakers to get the job done.

[i-will]

u can go the route i did . first u need a way to separate the the bass from the treble. i use a pc with a basic sound card that has a sub woofer jack.

as for the speakers i used ur basic amplified pc entertainment 3 speaker set. u can get the anywhere, especially bestbuy. that is a great starting point.

when it comes to hard bass u feel in ur chest i used car audio stuff. i used 2 12inch xplode subs (500watts each) in an enclosure built by me and a friend a few years ago.

here's where it gets complicated and i don't suggest u do this. for an amp(s) i opened a few boom boxes and traced back the circuitry to find the amp circuits, stripped them, powered them. then bridged the 3 of them to power the woofers. after soldering the headphone jacks and plugging it to the woofer socket on my pc i accidentally had the volume all the way up and woke up my hole building. they left a note on my door warning me about it happening again. i'm currently using this setup and after a little programing of the sound card software it hits really hard. almost too hard.

i listen to a lot of d&b, hip hop, instrumentals, stuff with a lot of bass. if u don't wanna shake ur house with crazy bass than just stick with the stereo pc speaker set. they have the standard headphone plug, left, right speakers, and sub. and u can plug ur ipod directly to it. a good set costs about 60 bucks.

sorry for the long story. i'm really bored.

[PCGUY]

Or take the less fun route and take the giftcard and buy an ipod docking speaker setup (boom box with a cord or docking place for your ipod).

[maggotman]

you could salvage parts from the getto blaster i remember when i was in schoo0l i made an amplifier with some transitors and some outher ods and sods