[qualhiveldorf]

My parents have huge speakers from an old cd player they are about 2 feet wide 1 foot deep and 4 feet high. Each speaker has a rating of 8 ohms and a max draw of 150 watts. I have no clue about amplifiers but i need it to handle both these speakers in stereo mode and be able to power them to their maximum rating. The speakers accept standard bare ended speaker wire. I am hoping to hook this up to my computer so i need either a 1/4 or 1/8 inch input jack or some type of converter cable that could plug into my computers 1/8 inch jack and also plug into whatever connection the amp has. Please guide me.

[Bios24]

I'd say go to your local best buy/circuit city and check out there selection of Stereo home amplifiers. (Or you could pick up a surround sound amp if the price is right, but you'd only be using it in Stereo) It should have many inputs and have plenty of power to hook up those speakers. 150w is not a lot of power, so most any modern home amp should be able to power them. What's your budget? I'd say ~$125-150.

[four4875]

if they're old... how are the drivers? is the foam surrounds dry roted and falling apart or anything? and any 150 watt per channel amp will take care of them pretty good. miht check partsexpress.com for somethin. and i believe this is more than qualified to be posted in the sound section, im sure you'll get more of a response there.

and you can buy a cable that goes from the 1/8 plug like ion the comp or portable cd players or whatever to a set of RCAs to plug into the amp with. i use one for my setup.

[larva]

All else equal, the bigger the speaker the less amplifier power is required to play it at a given volume level, rather than the opposite. Where this not true, all speakers would be tiny.

[Malpine Walis]

Well, if you want to do this the homebrew way, you could get a headphone extension cable from radio shack. When you cut it open, you will find two insulated wires with a bunch of stranded copper around it. Each wire carries the signal for one channel and the stranded copper is the ground.

If you surf over to any of the audiophile forums, they will tell you lots of stuff on this but the basic idea would be connect the insulated wires to the same terminal on both speakers and then split the ground wire to connect it to the other terminal. Some tips:

Make sure that you connect the signal wires to the same (usually negative) terminal on both speakers. If the sound is not quite right, you can try switching the terminals to see if that helps.

If you connect the wires for one side differently from the other, you will find that your sound will not be very good. As you move around the room, the level that you get from each channel will change (and it is possible (but rare) to get total dead spots). If that happens, check your wires and reconnect them as needed.

You say that you want to put the most power that you can through them. But really you would do far better if you don't. You need to think about two things here, Average power and peak power. If your average power is as high as you can go, then you peak will be higher. Then whenever you peak, you will hear distortion that will be quite unpleasant.

I find that a good rule of thumb is to remember the figure 80%. If your amp is rated for 80% of what your speakers can handle (120 watts) then you will have enough headroom for the speakers to sound good with no distortion.