headphone cutoff and cheap amp

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Right now I have four midrange speakers and a subwoofer. They all suck. q-: But that's okay, I'm only mildly bitten by the audiophile bug. I power the speakers with my computer, and supprisingly it works pretty good. I have two soundcards, the primary one powers the 4 speakers all by itself and its line-out is the line-in for the secondary card. The second card powers the sub all by itself (and acts as a cheapo low-pass filter, just set the bass all the way up, and the treble all the way down.)

My problem is, how do I add a headphone jack to the front of my computer? I don't know much about electronics, but I can use a soldering iron. (-: I think I need a circuit that somehow cuts off the speaker-out and line-out on the primary soundcard when the headphones are plugged in...but how?

Also, as you've probably deduced, my sound setup isn't exactly the greatest. Is there an amp design that's easy to build and, more importantly, cheap that I could use to power all these speakers? I don't care about surround sound...or stereo for that matter, I just want to be able to turn up the music and not have it get distorted. (That's the only thing keeping the music from seeping downstairs.) The four midranges are 8ohms, and that's all I know. (They're ripped from old boomboxes.) I think the subwoofer is 60watt RMS and 120watt max?? I can't check because it's fit snuggly in an almost airtight cube I made myself (yay, powertools.) It's a cheapo rat shack sub, with a dual voice-coil (right now I play the left and right channels on the two connecters, is this wrong?) Like I said, I'm content with the quality for now, but if I can build a decent amp for cheap, I'd really like to know.

Thanks y'all.

-Roy Miller
http://www.eightbit.org
 
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