Speakers (not cars so O/T)

[pompei]

Can anyone recommend any decent (and cheap) desktop speakers? The sounds coming from my monitor are unbearable!

 

Thanks.

[John F]

Can anyone recommend any decent (and cheap) desktop speakers? The sounds coming from my monitor are unbearable!

 

Thanks.

 

I run my PC through an old music centre.

[pompei]

That sounds a GR9 idea! Do you take a line out and into the AUX input of the music centre?

[ashmicro]

^ Yep. That's what I do. That said, you can get half decent speakers out of Tescunts for about a tenner.

 

Maybe check also that you have the latest drivers for your soundcard.

[dollywobbler]

I run my laptop through the stereo. Can't really beat it. I did buy one of those 'small speaker and boom box' kits for the computer but the sound is very disappointing.

 

One word of warning - our older laptop has a shite sound card in it so even through the stereo there's no bass at all. The cables to connect PC to stereo are dirt cheap though, so it's not like a great outlay even if the sound is still poor.

[pompei]

Thanks for that ... a trip to Maplins beckons

[myglaren]

I have a set of Harmon-Kardon speakers that I bought at a computer fair for £30 (£300 new).

They are the PC version of these Mac speakers*, not as visually impressive though.

 

 

The mac ones are around £100 now.

 

The sound is exquisite but the bass control went skewy and shook the house.

New bass control has been sitting here on my windowsill for 8½ years now so should have matured enough for fitting soon

 

In the meantime I replaced them with some Cambridge Audio speakers, again the same price both second hand and new, from another computer fair.

Excellent sound (until you compare it to the 'proper' stereo').

 

*first saw a set of these on the desk of a med student, He was out and had taken his Macbook with him.

I thought it was some obscure piece of medical equipment

 

I keep meaning to get another amp and hook my dust-gathering Dynatron speakers to the computer. One day maybe.

[cobblers]

I'll add +1 to the shite way. Get an old pair of house speakers (Wharfedale or whatever) and an old silver fronted amp/tuner off an old boy at a car boot sale. It'll cost you a tenner and sound many times better than anything you can buy that's marketed as computer speakers. Get a 3.5mm to phono lead off ebay for 99p and plug it into the aux input.

 

 

I'm no audiophile freak, but all these trendy "satellite" systems drive me up the wall. It's become fashionable and desirable to have really quite awful sounding speakers. Even to the point where my mate spent £500 on "home cinema" grade stuff (because it looks nice and his mrs is a snooty cow) and it honestly sounds no better than the £50 logitech 5.1 setup I bought when I was about 17. It doesn't sound any better because the sound quality is massively limited by the sheer size of the drivers used.

 

It's pretty much impossible for these 1"-3" speaker drivers used in the tiny satellite speakers to produce much sound below around 400hz, so they rely on the subwoofer to play all notes lower than this.

A subwoofer playing anything over around 150hz stands out like a sore thumb - You'll be easily able to hear where it is, and it makes a lot of music sound really awful. Messes up the stereo imaging and just makes music sound cheap.

Back to the case of my mates £500 Tannoy home cinema stuff. I've got a pair of old B&W speakers that cost me £10, and an amp the size of a fag packet I bought off ebay from China for £18. Mine doesn't look as nice, but it sounds a lot better in absolutely every situation.

 

 

Anyway I'll stop ranting. Most people are perfectly happy with them so you'll probably not be disappointed. But a proper pair of big speakers is a lot better

[ashmicro]

TOP TIP: Borrow a large guitar amplifier and plug it into your computer. Then, fire up Modern Warfare 3 and scare the shit out of your neighbours with your very own firefight, complete with loud-as-real sound effects. I recommend the M203 grenade launcher for maximum OMGs.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

I'll add +1 to the shite way. Get an old pair of house speakers (Wharfedale or whatever) and an old silver fronted amp/tuner off an old boy at a car boot sale. It'll cost you a tenner and sound many times better than anything you can buy that's marketed as computer speakers. Get a 3.5mm to phono lead off ebay for 99p and plug it into the aux input.

 

Precisely what I did, and a great decision it was too. £8 for a 1970s Toshiba amp, old stereo speakers from the loft and a headphone to phono cable from eBay. Result is leagues ahead of any fancy PC speaker sets.

[dieselnutjob]

I just bought a Lepai LP2020A+ amplifier on ebay new for £25. These are Chinese so cheap but contain a Tripath 2020 chip so are apparently quite good. The + version is better as it has a direct button so that you can bipass the bass/treble controls which apparently are quite bad.

 

These amps are tiny and have mounting tabs so you can screw it to the underside of a desk, but you do need a 12V power supply which I also got on ebay for £5 (it's a 4amp monitor power supply).

 

I'll let you know how it sounds once it arrives.

 

this is the one I bought http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150663759049

[cobblers]

My little amp is based on the tripath 2020. It's great, although it doesn't distort in a nice way (since it's class T) so you know very certainly when you've turned it up too loud.

 

EDIT, cos I'm mega bored and recently won an oscilloscope, I played 39hz and turned it up to 11 and took a pic of the waveform.Here's what it looks like when it distorts:

 

[cobblers]

Oh, I've also just worked out that while it claimed to be 20w per channel, its only kicking out ~12w there. It's perfectly loud enough for my office!

[dieselnutjob]

it depends what impedance your speakers are, it can probably do it if you have 2 ohm speakers

[cobblers]

I don't think the little 12v power supply it comes with would be man enough, it's only rated for 2A (so I'm doing well to get as much as I am)

 

I'm perfectly happy with it for what I paid.

[barefoot]

itunes will play wirelessly through your speakers.

 

there's a little icon bottom right to select external speakers

just connect the 3.5 mm jack output on the wireless thing to the aux in on your amplifier.

volume control is in itunes as well

[RoadworkUK]

What a terrific thread.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with the mix 'n match computer hi-fi philosophy; old Hi-Fi components for the win. The vast majority of sat 'n sub type computer set-ups I've heard are GR11 when you're sitting directly in front of your computer and the speakers are within a yard or so of you, but GR0.9 when it comes to actually filling a room. Case in point, a mate of mine had a Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 setup for COD, etc, and for gaming it sounded marvellous. So, when he got his new house he used his Black and Decker Router to channel conduits into the walls so he could conceal wiring to use his same system as a living room surround cinema system. Guess what? When moved to a bigger room the system that sounded smashing in an eight foot square boxroom sounded like a transistor radio playing in the Albert Hall.

 

I've kind of divorced myself from Hi-Fi as a hobby, it becomes a painfully expensive addiction. But I've heard a pair of Apogee Scintillas, I know what Martin Logan Electrostatics sound like through old Leak amplification, and I've come to terms with being able to live without it.

 

My Hi-Fi probably stands me at a bit less than a grand all in. Second hand Cyrus CD6, Talk Electronics Cyclone amp and a pair of boring old Mission 774s. For radio duties I use a budget Acoustic Solutions DAB with its digital output running through a Beresford DAC. It's a proper mongrel system but sounds perfectly good enough for me.

 

Computer sounds wise I use an ancient Sony Dolby ProLogic Amp connected to a Sony active home cinema amp and a pair of Acoustic Solutions bookshelf speakers from Argos. It's not Hi-Fi by even the most dilute standards, but it doesn't sound agressive and it's detailed and substantial enough for fun with flight simulators.

 

If anybody has one of the old '70s Dynaharmony amps by Hitachi I'll bite your hands off.

[pompei]

I bought the leads, now to retrieve the old teak/brushed aluminium receiver and Wharfedales from the loft. Thanks for all the suggestions. Wiring it up to a "proper" amp had never occurred to me. I've also got two guitar amps but I imagine if I started down that road Mrs P would probably pull my tweeters off.

[John F]

That sounds a GR9 idea! Do you take a line out and into the AUX input of the music centre?

 

Yep

 

A 3.5 mm jack plug to 2-pin DIN phono cable cost a couple of quid about 10 years ago... job done

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Alternatively plug one of those FM transmitters into your laptop and tune in on a massive 80s boombox. It'd be like living in the opening credits of Desmond's.