Thanks alot Ern for the suggestion. I didn't realize there was a more quite metal motor.

Panther, I agree with you. This is definitely why I am adamant on using a speaker with it's own dedicated amplifier. This shouldn't have any affect on the HL amplifier since it's just using the passing signal.

I finally got around to testing the Radio Shack speaker amp. I spliced a female 3.5m jackand connected it to therx18 boardto make this easier on me. I will say the result of the RS speaker amp threw me off a bit. It was atleast 2 times louder than the standard HL speaker. But really lacked in bass. The RS amp could barely be at full blast before painful distortion kicked in. But overall, an improvement over the standard HL.

Since I spliced the female jack into the rx18, it let me try a few other portable speakers. The results were not so good, although they are bass heavy and clean sounding on the intended devices, they really lacked volume using the HL board.

I suspect this is because they were portable STEREO speakers rather than mono. But, not cutting up my portable bose and sony speakers for this.