/diy/ - Do It Yourself

im trying to connect a headphone output to a louder speaker, but every time i connect the red and black wires to the white and black on the speakers it sounds distorted and muffled. however, when i touch the silver wire to one of the red or black ones while connected to the speakers, the audio improves drastically, but usually its either vocals that sound good or instrumentals, depending on which wire i touch it to. could it be a problem with power getting to the speakers? the bigger one is a 30 watt, 8ohm and the smaller one is 10 watts with 8 ohms. they are both connected to eachother so when i hook the speakers to the headphone wire the sound comes out of both. any suggestions?