I connected 5 small speakers to one input...

[abajaj2280]

Hello everyone, I was bored one day and I decided to take apart my old 5 speakers from my surround sound system that was no longer needed and after some snipping and adding wires, I connected 2 speakers to a 1/4 stereo phone jack which was connected to a 1/8 converter and straight to my ipod. My original plans were to get a Y adapter and repeat the same process with the other 1/4 stereo phone jack but with 3 speakers and connecting the Y adapter to my ipod, but it seems like I'm not supplying enough energy for all speakers to work at their best potential. As i did all this, i had a couple questions:

-Do all these speakers function the same by default, or are they only meant to be used as surround sound only by the way they were configured?
-Is there a volume switch i can buy that connects to the speakers to make them louder?

At the moment, i have only one stereo phone jack hooked up to my ipod and 2 speakers directly connected to them, and 3 other speakers connected to those 2 speakers.

-Is there a way to maximize the performance of these speakers?


By the way, as you can probably tell, I know absolutely nothing about speakers...

[gixxerific]

how many watts is that Ipod putting out.

[abajaj2280]

I have no idea, but i plugged in my speakers into my stereo system and they produced the same volume at the max volume of the stereo system, so i've come to the conclusion that it's just the speakers?

[oysteinsor]

Are your speakers passive or active? To me it seems that your speakers probably function a little like headphones, which have quite high impendance, but also require very little amplification to make sound. Have you tried to connect one of your speakers to the headphone jack of a pre-amp?

[hermanv]

I was bored one day and I decided to take apart my old 5 speakers from my surround sound system that was no longer needed and after some snipping and adding wires,

"Snipping and adding" inside the speakers or outside?

First I assumed your iPod simply couldn't supply enough power, but you report the same problem with your standard stereo set up. Something is very wrong.

1. Retrace your steps.
2. Wire up only one speaker for each channel, see if problem is improved.
3. Almost no standard stereo equipment comes with speaker jacks like you describe. Are you connecting to the speaker output of your stereo or to some intermediate connection?