What is it called? A thing you plug your Ipod into, it plays music?

an iPod speaker dock

something really powerful? is there such a thing for an ipod?

iHome? Usually they aren’t very good for a party. I would just run your husbands speakers. I mean its a party for HIS kid right? Hopefully he will understand.

Like @wenn said, you’re looking for an iPod speaker dock. The Bose SoundDock is pretty great and puts out unbelievably rich sound and deep bass for such a small unit. I have one and it’s pretty bitchin’. They’re not exactly cheap, though.. but perhaps some place rents them?

Just get a miniplug to RCA cable. They are a few bucks at almost any store that sells electronics. With that you can plug it into any stereo that has RCA inputs.

You can get half-decent ones – not as good as the Bose – at Target for about $100.

You already have the equipment and I’m guessing you spent enough on snacks & stuff. Tell your husband that wire is cheap but his daughter’s love is priceless. He can nut-up and let it go for a day… in 10 years, he will not regret it.

What kind of sound output are you looking for? And what are you looking to spend to “rent” something? There may be a cheaper way to do it and just buy some speakers. You can use anything that plugs into a headphone jack.

With a $2 cable (and possibly an adapter, for a total outlay of ~$5, including sales tax), pretty much any MP3 player can be hooked to any home audio system. Contrary to what some may believe, you don’t need to get something that has the Apple iPod docking connector to get your iPod to blast the walls down.

I do not consider any of the speaker docks to be loud enough for a decent party, especially not any of them that are reasonably priced. Those docks are generally designed to merely allow for leisurely listening without headphones/earbuds and are not designed to fill a space with sound, especially not a space full of people who are anything other than silent The Bose system that @MissAnthrope suggests cannot compete with the 1000W 5.1 surround home theater system (with iPod dock!) I got for less than half the price, and any lesser dock would be even more inadequate.

My suggestion is to just get the adapters required to hook into the aux inputs of your stereo and go from there. If you really are not up for moving the stereo then things may get tricky and expensive, and I have never been impressed by most rental PA systems anyways. Hell, it may be cheaper and give better sound to buy a home theater system like mine and install it in the basement permanently rather than rent anything!

@jerv – I agree with almost everything you said, but I would like to say that between my mom and me, we’ve used our SoundDocks for many a party (including those on the boat with a very loud boat engine going) and it was more than adequate.

Before I had a SoundDock, I used the minijack (headphone jack) to RCA cable to hook into my stereo. The cable is super cheap at RadioShack, definitely less than $5. Then, it’s incredibly easy to plug the iPod into a stereo.

@MissAnthrope Will it shake the floor if you drop in Genie by Airbase? I’m used to systems that do, especially the systems used at functions at the local school for the deaf. Personally, I am used to trying to drown out a machine shop.

I guess it all depends on how loud you really want to get, but if War Ensemble isn’t louder than actual warfare then your system is too weak for my tastes. But I think that what kills it for me is that the Bose systems tend to be mid-range oriented and thus can’t reproduce a tone sweep that goes from gut-shaking to dog whistle very well. That makes the music sound “muddy” and flat to my ears. Great mids, and decent volume for such a small unit, but no dynamic range.

Test your bass and high limits (or just get this tone generator) and tell me what you get. Most small systems can’t get below ~100Hz very well, and that won’t suit me at all. I won’t even consider earbuds or speaker systems that bottom out at 20Hz or higher, nor will I accept ones that can’t get up to at least 18KHz (a tone above what many adults can hear), and I rpefer strong response especially in the lower registers, so it is entirely possible that I am far fussier than either you or the OP.