Solved! How can I consistency conduct the signal of these speakers?

MythicalSnake

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Apr 9, 2017
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Hi,
I've found an old pair of stereo speakers (from an all-in-one Sony set I had a long time ago). These don't use the normal 3,5 mm ones. Each of the speakers has two seperate little wires at the end. When I use a 3.5 mm jack and touch the wires against that it does work, but I have to hold it a certain way (its very difficult tohold it that way the entire time). Does anyone know a solution so I can use these speakers? How can I consistency conduct the signal?
 
Solution
Do you understand the difference between the 3.5mm and the speaker wire connections?

3.5mm is low side. It is low power (typically only up to 5v) and sends the audio signal from a source device to an amplifier.
Speaker wire is for high side. This is for the end sound coming from the amplifier.

You cant hook a 3.5mm lead to the speaker wires and it power the speakers because the 3.5mm output does not have near enough power to make the speakers work, you are talking about 5-7w max.
Do you understand the difference between the 3.5mm and the speaker wire connections?

3.5mm is low side. It is low power (typically only up to 5v) and sends the audio signal from a source device to an amplifier.
Speaker wire is for high side. This is for the end sound coming from the amplifier.

You cant hook a 3.5mm lead to the speaker wires and it power the speakers because the 3.5mm output does not have near enough power to make the speakers work, you are talking about 5-7w max.
 
Solution

MythicalSnake

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It's quite loud and definetly quite clear. I personally own a pair of ATH-M40X's, so I should know what nice soundquality sounds like.
So... I've no idea why this is the case ...
 
Quality speakers and quality audio are not the same thing, just look at everyone who buys high end $1000 subwoofers and hooks it up to the cheapest amp they can find with a high wattage number (usually a bogus one) and the $80 walmart special stereo deck, not to mention the lack of any sound deadening in their trunk.

I dont mean to be rude here, but the fact that you own a nice par of headphones has nothing to do with understanding how audio signals work.
Just because you own a porsche does not mean you know how to work on super car engines.


If you are so deadest on trying to do this anyways:
You need a 3.5mm female jack.
You would then solder the speaker wires to the jack. On the male plug your top pin is left, middle is right, and bottom is ground so you would wire the + Left to top and + Right to middle, and both - to the bottom ground pin. How that relates to the output pins on the female jack varies but should come with some sort of instructions.

Unless your 3.5mm source is already amplified AND the speakers are very low wattage speakers this is still not going to work properly. Sure you might hear some sound, but you are not going to get all the volume level and all the frequency level this way.
3.5mm is low line level output < 1 watt, to properly power bookshelf speakers which should at bare minimum be 10w RMS, you need an amplifier.
 

MythicalSnake

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It is indeed stupid of me to say what I said. Thanks for pointing it out!
Besides that, I found these speakers in the attic - they're from a long time ago. Sure, I might miss a lot of the frequency range, it still sounds a lot better than the built-in TV speakers... And to buy an amp of 100 euro (or above) is out of my budget currently.
Thanks for your help! :)
 

MythicalSnake

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Oh wow... that's nice, thanks!
But how would I know if it's compatible with my stereo speakers?
 
No, RMS watts is the normal load of the speakers. This is the power level your speakers exepcts to see majority of the time.
Peak watts is the absolute max the speaker will take before blowing.

Think of this like normal sound. You would not want to be in an environment for long where the sound power was the maximum your eardrums could take without rupturing.

RMS is usually about 1/2 of peak watts, so a 20w RMS amp will be pretty much perfect for a 50w peak speaker as that means at max you wont quite be able to blow it.
 

MythicalSnake

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Apr 9, 2017
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Great! The speakers sound loud enough for me while conducting the signal using a jack funnily enough, but will certainly get this one then! 1 more thing, how did you find this exact model? I haven't heard of Lepy before.
 
The original model lepai was a great bang-for-buck model known amongst the tech crowd for cheap amp.

Lepy is a redesign/rebrand of the original, it is not using quite as good of mosfets in the amp but it is still at a tough to beat price point. Sound is not quite as clean as the original, but you would have to be an audiophile and listening to lossless music (like flac files) to notice.
 

MythicalSnake

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Apr 9, 2017
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Thank you very much. You helped me out a lot!!!!!
 

MythicalSnake

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Apr 9, 2017
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So sorry, but I have another issue: this particular amp is only available to be bought off Chinese sellers on Amazon. Isn't that rather fishy?