How To Turn Your PC into a Wall-Rattling Music Machine

I was a digital music early adopter. Back when iTunes first came out, I started the process of converting my collection of CDs—which filled several CD towers, my entertainment center, and some spare closet space—over to digital, "ripping" them and storing them on my hard drive. The reason was simple: the computer had become the center of my "man cave".

There was just one problem with my new electronic jukebox—the speakers. Regular "multimedia" PC speakers just didn't cut it. And while add-on speakers like JBL's "Creature Speakers" were fine for listening at my desktop, I wanted to be able to inflict, er, share my music with everyone in the house.

Fast forward a decade, and things haven't changed much. PC speakers have gotten better, but they're still designed for a very personal experience—you can't exactly feel the bass in your chest. The built-in speakers on my Apple iMac are adequate for watching a YouTube video or making a Skype call, but they start to break up when I turn the volume up for "Gimme Shelter".

There was just one thing to do: turn my computer into a stereo system. Here's how you can do the same: You'll need:

A stereo amplifier. You can get a decent one for under $100 – I bought an AudioSource Amp 100 amplifier for $75 from Amazon. It has two lines in, so I can connect another audio source to it as well.
Speakers, obviously. My eldest son delivered here—he bought me a pair of Bose 301 "bookshelf" speakers (with his employee discount). The speakers use "Direct/Reflective" technology—they have both front and rear cones, so they bounce sound off the walls behind them as well as projecting it directly from the front. The 301s are about $300 retail. For the space I put them in, they provided more than enough bass. But I've previously used other, more-standard bookshelf speakers to good effect.
Speaker wire. A spool of 100 feet of 16-guage speaker wire runs about $15 at your local Radio Shack.
Patch cables. Depending on your computer, and its sound card, you probably have a mini headphone jack for a line out. Get a mini-headphone male to RCA jack female patch cable, and standard stereo RCA patch cables—these will connect your computer to the amp.

Once you've got it all in hand:

Figure out where the stereo amplifier will go. I put mine on a shelf near my desk. But since I control the output volume using the computer controls, it's not really necessary for me to get to the knobs quickly.
Position the speakers. I floor-mounted mine on either side of my computer desk for simplicity and space consideration, but you'll want them at least 4 and a half feet apart. In the case of the Bose 301 speakers, to take full advantage of the reflective output, the speakers should be no more than 18 inches from the wall.
Spool out and cut an appropriate length of speaker wire to reach each speaker, matching up red and black outputs from the amp to the speaker.
Plug the mini patch cable into your computer's speaker out or headphone jack. Connect the "RCA" jacks (red and white) to the appropriate plugs on the female connectors of the "Y" patch cable. Plug the other ends into the line input for the amp.
Plug in the amp to power.
Launch iTunes, and rattle the walls.