So apparently my beloved Creative 7.1 system died somewhere along the line in my year of moving (sub supplies power to the whole system and acts as the amp, and won’t power on. Fuse is intact. Sigh). Gonna be real sad if I stick with these shitty ancient Altecs my brother loaned me.
Any recommendations for reasonably priced PC speakers? I’m not a huge audio snob or anything, but I need something that sounds better than the $20 garbage I’ve got.
Don’t need loud, don’t need Lil’ Jon levels of bass (though at least some is good), just need good reproduction for listening to music and getting clear gaming sound. I’d say $200 is a pretty hard limit.
If I may ask, do you listen to classical/choral music and/or hip-hop on them much? Those are the two genres I listen to quite a lot that suffer the worst with shitty speakers like I’m currently using.
If you listen to a lot of music, have enough desk space, and don’t need the positional audio from a 5.1 set, you’d probably be better off avoiding “desktop” speakers altogether. They make a number of compromises compared to the wider hi-fi audio world. Your $200 budget could get you a pair of bookshelf speakers whose sound quality will blow away even good computer speakers, along with a T-amp to drive them.
Yes, that Pyle amp looks similar to the one I have (Lepai Tripath, which doesn’t seem to be around anymore). I’m not sure exactly what separates the class-D one that r/audiophile recommended from it, and don’t have any experience with those speakers, but would guess that they would know their stuff over there. I’m only a dabbler in audio, and haven’t done much research since getting my setup a few years back (for the record, this is what I have: http://www.frys.com/product/7237393)
But yes, my experience has been that soundbars have similar problems as traditional desktop speakers in terms of losing some sound quality by squeezing into a small enclosure. I haven’t heard that particular soundbar, but there was no comparison when I was auditioning soundbars vs. similar-priced bookshelf speakers a few years ago.
Yeah, they are reportedly pretty good, but I think they are end of life. Certainly now hard to get over here, but I guess there may be some available via Amazon though.
I have a very nice little T-amp sitting on my desk for the headphones, which I should really match with a nice pair of bookshelves to do away with my old crappy logi-tech stuff. The good news is there is a mob bringing those MB42X’s into Oz under a different brand (Voll B44)with a very attractive price, given FX differences currently. Might have to try them out!
This might be worth checking out as well - a DSP correction filter for those Micca’s!
Here’s a question for ya, that’s sort of related to this topic (closest I could find).
I am looking for a way to play some music in my office at home, when I’m doing non-gaming stuff. Most of my music these days resides in iTunes, sadly enough, on an older MacBook Pro which I use now mostly for that and for travelling presentations. For the car, I put my music on an SD card and leave the card in the car most of the time. My iPod is an old pre-Lightning (30 pin) Nano, which I hardly use any more.
Ideally, I’d love to just take another SD card and slap it into a system and have it play music like in the car. Alternatively, I could export the music to a USB stick I guess. In either case I’d be getting a head unit and a couple of quality small speakers probably. I want to avoid buying a current gen iPod, as I really have little use for one these days as I don’t generally take music with me outside of the car. I don’t want wireless streaming necessarily, as we already have a ton of devices on the home WiFi, and I have had issues in the past trying to get portable Bluetooth speakers to work reliably with my Mac.
Unfortunately, the only systems I’ve seen that have built-in SD card readers seem to be, well, terrible, stuff from Pyle and IA that have dreadful reviews and questionable quality. The old stereo stuff I have laying around only has RCA inputs, and are fairly awkward with lots of wires and far more inputs and capabilities than I need.
Yeah, I checked the wirecutter rec as well. Unfortunately the av40 set is discontinued and expensive used, and the replacement model is full of reviews saying they are emphatically not as good as the av40s. I figure the audio nerds on reddit probably have a decent idea what they’re talking about though.
Hmmm, I was reading some reviews about the Voll’s (Miccas) and found myself on Stereonet, where he rates them like this:
LSK M4 MkII’s? What are they, I wonder? Quick google. Aussie mob called LSK that does DIY speaker kits.
Oh, I’m an idiot. Here are the M4 MKI’s, currently set up as my surround rear channels, virtually wasted for all the use they get there. Built them nearly decade or so ago for some home theater L/R’s and they are pretty nice gear. They were ~AUD$300/pr at the time, I recall.
I have another larger speaker set I can swap in for the rear channels that will serve adequately enough. I foresee those M4’s migrating to my PC to be paired the Digitech headphone amp (which is actually a locally branded Dayton DTA100/Incom 50W RMS T-amp)
in favour of the old Logi-tech X230, which seems to have misplaced its mid-range.
I’m rockin’ a pair of Atlantic Technology bookshelf speakers I bought in the 90’s, and a Dayton Class T amplifier. Sounds great even though I don’t have the sub-woofer hooked up. The amp suffers from the “bright blue LED” syndrome so I cover up the LED partially with black electrical tape.
Sure, though I do have a few albums I bought or that were bought for me on iTunes, and those I’d have to re-buy. Most of my stuff is old ripped CDs, at least. Which is a problem in and of itself, as the quality is often dreadful compared to modern CDs (we’re talking CDs I bought in the 1980s for a good number of them).
How much are you willing you spend and how much are you willing/able to tinker? I’m not up to speed on the current crop of hi-fi electronics that may include USB/SDCard support in an integrated system, but if you have some existing analogue stereo equipment you can use and are willing to tinker, how about a RaspberryPi set up as a headless, dedicated music player with local library, controlled via web/phone, etc?
Export your music from iTunes to a USB drive plugged into the Pi (or the onboard SDCard if capacity is not a concern), plug it into an existing stereo with analogue cables and you have yourself a handy dedicated music box you control from your phone or other web browser on the local network.
There are quite a few music player images ready to go for this kind of thing. Download the ISO, deploy to SDCard, boot Pi, plug into stereo, done.
Or, if you are really serious and budget permitted you could build it as an all in one DAC/AMP, as indicated in the last couple of links in particular.
Honestly, if I had not gone down a Sonos path a few years back and had access to an always on streaming source, I would have deployed something like this already!
@TheWombat Sounds like you have an old receiver/speakers. You could just pick up a 3.5mm-to-dual-RCA cable and run that directly from the MacBook to the receiver and you’re only out $5 and you’ll probably have better audio quality than most <$200 solutions.
Thanks to both Denny and Sharleo. I’ve considered both options, and they’re certainly doable. I’m wondering what the sound quality of going from the headphone jack to RCA inputs would be. I guess no worse than most iPod listening? The more elaborate option Sharleo offers is intriguing, but I guess I still need something to control playback, that is, pick songs or playlists or whatever rather than just running what’s on the USB/SD card as it stands. Though I guess with the fancier set up I’d control it remotely somehow? Interesting from a tinkering point of view, to be sure.
Hell, I have several intact PCs laying around that could be dedicated music machines I suppose. Have to give this all some thought. Thanks!
