Hey guys,

I have an 8ohm .2 watt speaker and I want to wire it up to play music from my computer. Can I take a headphone to headphone cable, splice up the end not connected to the computer, input it in to a breadboard, and use an amplifier to drive the speaker?

Any suggestions? thanks

 

Hello,

You can take the line-out and put that into an LM386 amplifier (there are 1 Watt versions).
See datasheet:

Greetings,
Bertus

 

A headphones extension cord is usually not shielded. It will pickup mains hum when used to feed the high input impedance of an amplifier.
You must use shielded audio cable to feed your new amplifier.

A 0.2W speaker is tiny and will sound awful. No bass.

 

Just making sure what you want, to attach a home made amp to your computer output?

Seems like these things come in clusters.

 

What I have now is a crappy 8ohm .2 watt speaker.

I want to be able to play my iTunes through it (I know it wont sound good).

So I guess, yeah, I want to connect the shielded audio cable from the headphones jack in to an amplifier to power this speaker.

From the info presented thus far it sounds like I was right about splicing the other end of a "shielded" audio headphone cable FROM the laptop, input the signals in to the amplifier that someone suggested and connect this speaker to the output of the amp?

Thanks

 

Yep. What I don't understand is why you want to polish a turd? It's a crappy little speaker and no matter what, it's best job is to be an annunciator for windows sound bytes...maybe you should go to a garage sale this spring and get some powered speakers for your pc, and mod/use them for iTunes.

 

The speaker is your limitation, as other people have said. If you go to the Projects Collection Forum look up Project: "Quatour" multimedia active speakers by Cumesoftware. It will give you a good idea what is involved.

Basically, other than the low quality speakers, you have the right idea.