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What I learnt shopping for decent computer speakers
- h2odragon 6y agoThe phrase, "too much bass for a small room" is an immediate clue that unlike most such reviews, there's a connection to reality here. Refreshing change. I've seen consistently good talk of Dayton Audio gear for the last several years too, fwiw.
- declnz 6y agoAgree, though as to the phrase I'd say this is a slight simplification / mis-diganosis of prominent room modes [1], which can be fixed somewhat. [1] https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/listening-room-acoustics-1 https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/listening-room-ac...
- xeromal 6y agohttps://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers (No longer for sale) I bought these for 40$ a few years ago and have them powered by a sony receiver and they handle anything I throw at them. I constantly have to turn them down for sake of my eardrums and work just fine for this layman. I do wonder if I'm missing out sometimes but I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear when they try to show me. I doubt anyone is interested in my setup, but I have a harmony hub that coordinates my entire little set up. I have presets for my PS5, computer, nintendo switch, and turn table. I hit a preset and the hub will fire all the IR + bluetooth signals needed to power the TV and other necessary systems. All go through these little speakers and I get blown away every time. Edit: A funny anecdote, but I bought these 40$ speakers and realized I needed an amp or receiver to use them. Ended up buying a sony receive for a few hundred open box. I then decided I was going to buy blue rays since I had such a nice video and audio set up but first I needed a blue ray player. Waited on the PS5 and bought that. 1000$ later, I finally can use my stupid 40$ speakers I got on sale. Now my PS5 can output HDR which I hear is divine and my current TV can't handle it. It just never stops does it? lol
- leephillips 6y ago“I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear” Often they can’t, either, as blind listening tests show.
- xeromal 6y agoSo is it mostly a scam like wine then? I just tune it to what sounds good and I'm off. I just managed to do it for 40$ lol
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThere's probably some price point below which there is a perceptible difference in quality, but, yes, a lot of it is a scam. At a minimum, you there's no guarantee of bang for buck above a certain fairly low price ceiling.
- squarefoot 6y agoNot technically scams, obvious ones aside (ie, hundred bucks for a wooden knob or "directional" cables); audiophile gear is indeed top quality, but the excellence they aim to would never be recognizable by any human ear on the planet because the incredibly small improvements, if any, would be measurable only by lab instruments. One can spend ten times less and still not hear any difference, but as any psychologist could confirm, once someone spends a fortune in something he believes it will sound better, he will surely hear that difference. Too bad nobody else will, unless they also fall in that trap.
- WalterBright 6y agoWhat I like from higher end equipment is volume controls that don't have scratchy spots.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoIt's only a scam if you don't enjoy it.
- asciident 6y agoDoes anyone have a mirror? The link is down. Nothing against the OP, but I don't know how in 2021, websites can't handle a few dozen visitors at once. Even a $5 digital ocean machine can handle thousands simultaneously without going down.
- keane 6y agohttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://mybyways.com/blog/what-i-learnt-shopping-for-decent-computer-speakers http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
- naavis 6y agoGetting to the front page of HN brings a lot more traffic than "a few dozen visitors at once". https://nicklafferty.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-re-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news/ https://nicklafferty.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-re-on-th... https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-page-how-much-traffic-do-you-get/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p...
- LukeShu 6y agoPer the screenshot in latter: 1571 page views per hour. That's 26 page views a minute, which is "a few dozen".
- naavis 6y agoThe screenshot is from the point the email was sent, not the point where the site went down.
- amelius 6y ago18.000 visitors per day is 1 visitor every 5 seconds.
- naavis 6y agoWhen you post stuff on HN, the visitors don't usually come in an orderly queue at the same rate for 24 hours. There is most likely a spike where most of the visitors open the site within a couple of hours, and then click around the other parts of the site. It can get pretty taxing pretty fast if you are serving for example images, and each page view triggers database queries.
- neverminder 6y agoI waited until they were 50% off and bought a pair of JBL Professional 308P MKII for £149 a piece. Apparently they are the best speakers in the world under $1000 (a piece).
- jbverschoor 6y agoThe Behringer Truths 2031A are still a great buy, although they're super heavy.
- deltron3030 6y agoYou can buy highend Hifi speakers from the 80s for very cheap (often under 100 bucks a pair), and they don't really degrade if they have elastic cones made out of rubber. Speaker development didn't really evolve since then, what sounded transparent and lifelike back then still does today. If you're in Europe, check online marketplaces for Canton GLE 60, 70 and 100 or Canton Quinto. They also have a high impedance, so low powered amps do fine.
- smoldesu 6y ago>They also have a high impedance, so low powered amps do fine. Did you mean that they have a low impedance?
- jiofih 6y agoLow wattage amps have high impedance. So you want high impedance speakers to match. More wattage = lower impedance = expensive equipment.
- brigade 6y agoThe better answer is that the closer an amp's output impedance is to the speakers' impedance, the greater the variation in amplified frequency response. Because impedance varies depending on the frequency of the signal. So an amp with high output impedance doesn't work well with low impedance speakers. But it's barely a problem nowadays for class AB amps; mostly only tube (which have other problems) and class D amps.
- randyrand 6y agothe lower resistance there is, the faster current and power naturally flow. You'd need an amp that expects that.
- brigade 6y agoStrong disagree that it hasn't evolved; modern advances in materials and modeling mean drivers have wider ranges and lower distortion. Modern DSP can extend the low frequency response even further than just porting, and provide a crossover more tuned to the specific drivers used than is practical with analog components, or even correct for room modes. And we know way more about controlling off-axis dispersion than we did in the 80s. Which especially means that small speakers can be way better than similar sized speakers were in the 80s, kinda relevant when you're using them for a computer. Though, maybe less true at $100.
- rangoon626 6y agoDoes anyone still put soundblaster cards in their rigs these days?
- FooHentai 6y agoUSB-connected external audio DAC/AMP units are more common nowadays if you want to move beyond the onboard sound output. Theory is that moving the digital/analog conversion outside of your PC chassis achieves more in sound quality improvement (interference reduction) than a fancy internal card.
- wj 6y agoAny recommendations for a cheaper usb dac? Edit: one that I could connect both headphones and speakers to and switch between each would be sweet.
- FooHentai 6y agoIf you’ve got active (powered) speakers then many headphone combo DACs have line-outs that will work well. I personally have the ifi Zen dac and Fiio K5 pro, and recommend the Zen. The speakers and headphone outputs are always active, I just turn the speakers themselves on/off or mute to control which output I’m consuming. If you need to power speakers then separate units are the way to go (DAC/Amp combo for the headphones and to PC, speaker amp chained to the line out on the dac). However units like the Loxjie A30 can do all three duties, it just may be a little weak on the headphone amplification side of things since it’s not the focus. Note also if your pc/laptop has a toslink optical output you can alternatively use that to bridge to an external amp rather than using USB. Then your choice of dac/amp widens a bit to include units that don’t have USB inputs e.g. home theatre AV receivers and such.
- wj 6y agoThanks for responding. I just ordered the Fiio K5 Pro though but both looked like good options. Excited to increase my audio quality after all of these year.
- sn_master 6y agoI've been using harman/kardon Onyx Mini for 4 years, same ones. they're amazing. Before that I was using only headphones.
- geocrasher 6y agoI'm sure I'm not the only one with a $3 stereo purchased from a garage sale stuffed under his desk. All the volume I want, and darn near free.
- WalterBright 6y agoI use thrift store speakers for my home theater. The speakers were $20, the stereo to drive it $20 from the thrift store, the bluray player for $40 from the thrift store, the screen was $50 for the canvas from Amazon, another $50 for the lumber to make a frame. The only pricey thing was $300 for a projector from Amazon. A few more bucks for a ceiling bracket & cables. Lately I've been seeing projectors at the pawn shop for pretty cheap. I'm very happy with it. It's HD, and 102 inches.
- fuzzfactor 6y agoOh the indecency!
- stevenhuang 6y agoI went through this recently and wanted something great sounding but small, ended up with the Vanatoo T0. Great speakers but you pay for it ($500 CAD).
- smoldesu 6y agoBuy a pair of cheap studio monitors, and look for good reviews. I use a pair of Presonus Eris 3.5's and they work great for less than $100.
- deeblering4 6y agoThese days I think the best route for high quality computer speakers are powered near field studio monitors. for example you can get a pair of JBL 305 powered monitors for $200 and they will blow the pants off “audiophile” computer speakers 4x the price. Just need to sort out finding a sound card with trs outs (bonus is you get a physical volume knob and xlr mic inputs as well), another $50-100 or so.
- m463 6y agoI've gone analog out and it's always trouble. There's a hiss or a hum or a full-on ground loop. I enjoy optical spdif and think it should be more prevalent. The other possibility is USB-audio but then you have to deal with drivers.
- fpgaminer 6y agoYeah, I was looking into a sound card for different reasons and the "modern" sound cards are all garbage. Terrible CODECs and OpAmps, combined with poor circuit design that drives them out-of-spec. SPDIF out of the computer and into even a half-way decent DAC seems to be the way to go. Plus if you have more than one source you save money, since you only need to buy the DAC once.
- m463 6y agoI have a schiit dac and it has optical, spdif a and usb. Honestly it would be cool if it had two of each.
- neolog 6y ago> then you have to deal with drivers. I've been using USB DAC on Linux for years, always worked out of the box.
- wilsonfiifi 6y agoQuick question, does the DAC still work when connected to hdmi monitors? I keep having to fiddle with pulse audio at every login to get the headphone jack on my NUC to work.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoI recently built a pair of Overnight Sensations and a Desktopsub with high level inputs. It was a joy, bjt the price of tools to start building was several times higher than that of the kits.
- FpUser 6y agoFew years ago I bought couple of KEF Q300 and Paradigm 12" sub on garage sale for peanuts. Works like a charm for me.
- vidanay 6y agoEdifer powered bookshelf speakers for me.
- nucleardog 6y agoMe too. You’re done for like $100. They get plenty loud, some audiophile reviews saying they sound “shockingly good” for what they are which means they’re more than good enough for me, don’t need to find and spend money on amps and DACs and whatever else. Hundred bucks, plug them in the wall, problem solved. I’m not running a sound studio at my desk.
- soonnow 6y agoI actually have Edifier speakers for my TV and they are really ok. For the computer I use audioengine speakers, because they look great and I mean it's what I'm looking at all day.
- tiew9Vii 6y agoI went through the computer speaker setup options at the start of lockdown. In the end I went with a reasonable well reviewed for price (cheap) front ported passive speakers Jamo S 803. Front ported as they sit close to a wall so front porting is supposed to stop the boomy sound. They are small enough to sit on a desk but slightly bigger than average computer speakers so get a fuller sound. I then paired it with a SMSL SA300 class D amplifier. The thing is tiny, has bluetooth, aux in and usb dac. I connect using the inbuilt usb dac instead of aux in as noticed with my imac there was a very slight audible hum from computer noise on aux. As it's a class D amp it has low power draw. For a small office home office (small spare bedroom) I find it a good setup. The stereo imaging is very good, it's like voices are right in front of you, the tiny amp is more than powerful enough for the small room (it's not a home cinema). The setup worked out cheaper than a reasonable priced pair of active studio monitors. It seems better than most computer designed speakers I've listened to and again cheaper than the better computer designed speakers with usb dac built in.
- cweagans 6y agoCostco is selling a nice Klipsch set that I’ve been very happy with. It’s a 2.1 set, which is something OP didn’t want, but they also have a separate volume knob for the sub specifically so you can dial it back if you need to.
- dusted 6y agoI gave up trying to find "computer speakers", I tried some "high grade" ones, but they were trash, even though expensive. A cheaper, and better setup for me, was to buy a Scarlett 2i4 USB Dac and a pair of PreSonus Eris E5 monitors, nice sound, can play very loud (given the size of the room), and gives some nice flexibility for doing stuff with sound and midi too.
- nottorp 6y agoOne more vote for studio monitors. Unless you already have an amp + speakers from 20 years ago like me. I believe they'll bury me with them.
- tempodox 6y agoHarman-Kardon Sound Sticks do it for me. You can adjust the bass separately, which comes in handy. Not all rooms are created equal.