Thank you Adam. I figured this thread was going nowhere.
Sorry about the late response - I had it up yesterday to respond, but then I got sidetracked. I'm glad that you didn't just write us off and leave.
Then I tried to host them on a website, but I can't post the links either.
I'm pretty sure that you need five posts to do either, photos or links. No one is going to be mad if you throw up a couple of nothing posts (such as "Need 3 more...", "Need 2 more...").
I didn't think that the Sony would be powerful enough to power the speakers. I've been looking online for receivers, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at.
Things to look at in terms of matching electronics up to speakers are: impedance and sensitivity.
Impedance (e.g. 8 ohms) relates to the electrical load that an amplifier/receiver is going to see (related note: receivers and speakers basically just form an electrical circuit). As impedance drops, the amp will supply more current - and too much current draw can overheat and/or damage an amp. 8 ohms is a pretty typical and easy-to-drive value for most amps, and your Sony amp is designed for 8-ohm speakers because that's what the Sony speakers are rated. The rating is a "nominal" value, and the actual impedance varies over frequency (I believe), but the nominal value is normally a great guide.
Sensitivity (e.g. 90 dB) is a rating of how loud a speaker will play when provided a certain amount of power. A lot of speakers are rated at how loud they will sound at 1 meter away from the speaker when 1 Watt is sent to the speaker. A lot of speakers are somewhere in or near the 85-95dB range. The higher that value, the louder a speaker will be at any given power, so...the higher the value, the easier it is for you to play a speaker loud with any given amp.
There are a lot of threads on this forum related to receivers and amps. I tend to focus on the features that I want (audio decoding, connections, etc.) within my budget first, then I look to see if I think a receiver has enough power for my listening habits (I tend to listen fairly quietly, so that's not normally an issue for me). A lot of the time, you'll likely be using less than 1 W when listening - often, in the 0.01 W range. But, to get 10dB louder (which a lot of people equate to twice as loud), you need 10 times the power. So, to be twice as loud as at 0.01 W, you need 0.1 W. To be four times as loud, you need 1 W. To be eight times as loud, you need 10 W. And so on. Also, there's the ability of an amp to handle very high power levels for very short periods of time, such as for cymbal crashes in music. Ahhh, but I ramble on - you can read all about that here.
Just let us know whatever questions you have.
