Low sound from rear speakers

pickarooney

I have the following sound setup :
A subwoofer into which can be plugged 4 small speakers.
The subwoofer has two connections to the PC's soundcard, one for front, one for back.
The front speakers are plugged directly into the subwoofer, and there is a direct line from the woofer to the soundcard to carry the signal for the front speakers.
The rear speakers are plugged into an extension lead, which is plugged into one of the jacks for rear speakers on the woofer.
The line from the woofer to the soundcard which carries the signal is split, to allow me to send the sound to the TV.
I think I've covered everything. The diagram demonstrates my limited skill with MSPaint, but I hope it's clear enough.

Now, the thing is that the sound from the TV is quite weak, and the sound from the rear speakers is weaker still, presumably because the signal is getting watered down due to the two connectors.

I was just wondering if there's any way of boosting the signal to the rear speakers (the TV isn't really important), or if there's a better way of setting this up to reduce loss of signal, even a bit?

Krusty_Clown

I guess you already know that it's not a very ideal setup!

When you look at the routing from your TV to the speakers, you're going to suffer degredation at each pass-through point..
Is your soundcard input volume (Mic. in?) volume turned up high enough?

Are the rear-speakers active(powered) or passive? If they're passive, you might consider getting a set which are powered (or plug-in a power adapter if they support one).

Have you considered getting a new sound-card that supports Dolby Digital, or at least Dobly Pro-logic Surround? Might sort-out your woes...

pickarooney

Ah, I knew there was something wrong - I should have put some arrows on the diagram
As it stands, I just listen to the TV through its own speakers, so there's no sending of the tv sound signal through the 4 speakers; the connection is from the second output jack to the TV, in order to listen to AVIs etc. through the TV speakers. Actually, I hadn't even considered trying to pipe the TV sound through the other speakers, thbough it's a tempting thought..
The rear speakers are passive, in that they run off the power of the sub-woofer, and I don't know if there's any way of giving them their own power source.

A new sound card or better speakers is what I'm looking at, basically?

Krusty_Clown

Well, I wouldn't jump out and buy anything just yet, not until you have diagnosed your problem..

Using a set of active speakers will certainly give you more volume than your existing passive speakers..

A sound-card that supports rear channels (with distinct outputs) would eliminate the need to split the signal..

Borrow someone elses stuff, and see if that fixes your problem.

pickarooney

Yeah, having tested the components individually, it seems one of the cables is dodgy, probably badly soldered. Swapping them around gives me a much better sound out of the first rear speaker, so I'll see can I get a replacement cable for the second rear one. Also, by messing around with the balance, I can get a nearly even output.
Cheers