i dont no much about home audio but i know how to hook sh*t up. I had a dvd player with a built in 5.1 channel amplifier and i had 4 speakers on the 2 front channels because the 2 other channels were dead already and i went to turn it on today there was no sound and i tried everything. DO you think the amp died since it was a piece of sh*t Coby brand and only cost $100?
The fact that you hooked up 4 front speakers likely overloaded the system power output for those connections. The other fact would be is that u bought a no name brand receiver. For like 300$ u can get a decent Onkyo TX-SR303. I have the same system in my bedroom and I just use it for computer, but it works great. My advice, dont buy low end S*%T.
Your amp died for a reason - it broke. It sounds like it had broken at the rear first. Then when you connected the other two speakers to the front amps (and probably halved the impedance making them a hard load) you took out the front amp too...