Your soundcard is not producing enough voltage for the receiver hence the low sound level.

i use a midrange pioneer receiver.

im guessing that ur onboard sound is the problem. im usisng my receiver right now and it kicks ass.

if you are using a decent sound card then im guesing theres something wrong with your connections somewhere. if it soudns good from a tv or cd player then it will sound the same from a pc.

the signal it's getting is at fault

you will want to use the digital coax or fiber optic
connect if you can for best possiable sound

If you have the money and space you can't beat a good stereo reciever and speakers. That is the best route imo.

Like I said before, the quality will be better from the reciever, but the Logitchs will be cheaper. It's all about what is more important to you, price or quality. The Z5500's are great speakers, but a stereo reciever and good set of speakers offer so much more.

I'll start by saying with an HTIB, you are generaly paying for the reciever. The speaker will not be of very good quality, especially the subwoofer.

Now, it's been a long time since I looked into speakers and what's what out there. All i can tell you is that with just about any reciever and a good set of speakers you will have much better quality sound. It's really all on what speakers you get or already have. You seem to know enough about stereo equipment to know what speakers will offer the best sound and at the best price. Unless you have a high budget for this and space is no real concern, the z5500's will probably be the best bang for the buck. They sound good, offer 5.1 sound, and are small taking up little space on your desk. I recently upgraded to Klipsche promedia 5.1's form my old onkyo reciever and 2 crummy Kenwood bookshelf speakers. The Klipsches are better all around, but I got them for $175 because someone returned them to best buy. If I had the money I would much prefered to spend 3 times that on a nice set of Klipsch tower speakers.

Bottom line, it all come down to what you want to spend and how versitile you want the set up to be.

yamaha natural sound stereo receiver R-V501
Love the receiver, got it from the dental office when they replaced it, even on the television it still works a little funny, I use the tv input for the tv and cd for the console system, phono is unused, it has limited imputs. I have a 6omh and a 8omh speakers, 4 sony, 2 are bookshelfs, 2 satelites, I think the 6omh ones are really putting a toll on the system. I have to raise the volume on the receiver considerally in order to get it to kick in both a and b speakers, once it kicks in I lower volume and it works fine. Same thing with headphones, I disable both a/b plug in high quality headphones Audio Technica a900ltd, and same thing happens I have to raise volume in order to get it to send enough power then I can lower volume again. I love the sound that comes out of it when it functions well. I was considering getting a new receiver, its hard now to figure out whats good and whats bad, 7yrs ago you get a yamaha and you know you got good quality product, right now they are not as nice as they used to make them, specially sony, they made some crazy stuff in the 80's, my dad had a whole system back then with two big stand up speakers, it was a stack system, one area equalizer, another cassette, another am/fm ect. Thanks for taking time to read this.

Helluva reciever... 80 W @ 8 ohms / channel...

Here's a link to the user manual.

http://www.yamaha.com/menuitems/manuals/yec/R-V501.pdf

Don't know what sound card you are using, or what TV... But with that many watts you should have to turn something DOWN not UP to make listening enjoyable....

Make sure that you are using the front channels, and the 8 ohm speakers. (not that it matters a lot...) As a cross check try the rear channels with same speakers.

It's possible that this unit has a dead output amplifier, and is just running on the pre-amp.

Have you tried just running two speakers directly? If that's not working, then my original suspicion looks likely.

6 ohm speakers can kill an amp made for 8 ohms....it's a harder load....kind of like it takes 80 watts at 4 ohms to do what 40 will @ 8...with the right speakers......back on topic

If it is distorted maybe it is plugged into the wrong input....Phono will do this if you run to it...as a record player needs a pre-amp(that will be in the amp for the phono connection)

Does the amp work fine with other devices. plug in a CD/mp3 player to it?

For the record i was doing this years ago with a P133 and a realistic(radioshack) amp. that thing kicked ass over almost anything on the market today.. and to top it all off it was only 2 channels of 60 watts each.... @ 6 per channel walls rattled(for real)... it is all over rated now...

Also..... there are not many sound cards on the market that will give 4 watts anymore(SB 16/AWE64/ESS audiodrive/lucent modem/sound card...those all had it...)....those days are gone .. have to take good care of the sound blaster 16....for just that reason....it drives 4 speakers in the garage...with a whopping 2 watts of power @ 8 ohm's.....

Make sure you have the correct cables. 80ohm mini - RCA is what you need I believe. It realy sounds like somehting is set up wrong...

My Pioneer reciever and insignias get to ear bleeding leves quick and the speaker distorts from the massive power output in stereo.

Onkyo, Harmon Kardon and Yamaha all make a cheaper "Discreet" amplifier.

That is why they would be my choice. You may find a Sony for $100 and the deal will sound too good to be true... Probably something like 150W per channel @ 8 ohms. Well in this case it will be too good to be true.

There are two types of receivers out there...

What I call Wattifiers
and
What I call Amplifiers

Wattifiers use a pooled amp technology... What this means is that there is a single 150W amp that is in effect shared between "ALL" channels. This is a bad thing especially when you start to get to more channels like a 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 or even 8.1 environment. You see all channels draw from the same amp so if your right channel and your left channel are both taking a large hit at the same time the draw s shared on both channels.

Amplifiers often have a lower rating "like mine" ~80W/channel. The diference being each channel has its OWN 80W Discreet amplifier. What this means is no OTHER channel can affect any OTHER channel. So if the left and right hit hard at the same time there are no ill effects.

Wattifiers have even more issues "amp recovery time" when it comes to more channels. Many action movies for instance will have large hits on ALL channels 5 of the 5.1 when this happens you effectively split the amp into 5 ways which results in ~30W/channel (in a perfect world) available. In the Amplifiers with descreet amplification when this happens ALL channels still get the full 80..

PS... Carver is a good name too but a little more expensive and a little different tech than most other amps/receivers.

well I figured it out, last time I did a crappy fast put together job, I noticed the sound was muffled a bit, switched in settings to 2.1 and presto, all fixed. gonna experiment so see if its worth it.