Personal Sound Reinforcement, aka my room

Pie4Weebl

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I kinda want a new sound system for my computer. At the moment I am using a crappy $90 surround sound system from walmart and I just have the 5 speakers scattered around the desk. The thing I like about it is that I can get it loud and it has a lot of punch with the bass, something most computer speakers don't. The feed for the system is a stereo output and I have no desire for real surround sound since all I use it for is music playback. These are some ideas I had for a way of going about it:

Method 1: New stereo system
This in my mind is probably the most ideal method, although it would cost more. Basically this system would be a sound system from scratch and would comprise of an audio receiver, two medium sized bookshelf speakers, and a sub woofer. With this I could get volume I am accustomed to in a more condensed form and get higher quality.

Method 2: New surround system.
This method is basically what I did now, get a low range surround sound system and stack the speakers together, for this it would be nice if the speakers were cube shaped and stackable. It can be a bit cheaper than the previous method but not as desirable.

Method 3: Computer Speakers
This method is one I am weary of, but there might be something nice out there. Computer speakers that are large enough to give me a loud volume and a sub with punch. The JBL's I used before my current setup were a great quality, but couldn't fill my room like I like.

So what do you think would be the best way for me to go and not cost too much.
 
I would look into a good set of speakers and a receiver to go with them. Go to your local Best Buy or similar retailer and listen to some systems and buy what sounds good to you. Although this is likely out of your price range, you might also look into the Mackie HR624 studio monitors - they're absolutely amazing speakers, but cost a pretty penny too.

BTW, stay away from Bose! Bose uses inferior parts to build their systems and a ton of signal processing to achieve what is really only mediocre sound. If you want to read more about why you should never buy a Bose product again, read this article:

http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

Mike
 
Bose bashing, intresting site never knew always though bose was goold
 
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There are caveats to that statement... for instance the much older Bose 901's were a fantastic speaker. Beautiful sound. I have spend many an hour in front of my uncles pair of Bose 901's just listening.

The article is correct however, the newer little bose cubes are a wonderful exercise in digital processing... not in speaker build quality.
 
i have too little jbl computer speaker which i use as my stereo in my room. given, i dont blast much mozart, but i like them

also i was in the apple store and there were some pretty sweet speakers there, compact and nice sounds
they were really expensive though
 
i have too little jbl computer speaker which i use as my stereo in my room. given, i dont blast much mozart, but i like them

also i was in the apple store and there were some pretty sweet speakers there, compact and nice sounds
they were really expensive though

Of course there were expensive they were in an Apple store !!!

I have a really nice set of Boston Acoustics on my desk here at work they constantly blast me with everything from chillout to Hardcore, Mozart to Metal. Biggest draw back, I had to turn down the bass as I was rattling the accountants pencil drawer too much. < her desk is in the office next to mine we share a wall between us, in more ways than one :twisted: >

At home I used to use my surround sound reciever/amp for my computer, then I had kids and I kept waking up the Baby, my wife made me buy a smaller set of speakers. So now I use a set of Acoustic Logic sattelites and sub, I don't like the nearly as much as my BA's at work.
 
maybe if you rattle the accountants pencils your paycheck will increase too....

i just use the ones built into my laptop. but being in a college dorm is kind of limiting in how much power i can put out....if I wanted big sound, i would borrow some of the macies from the rhpb group here and put them in my room....i wanna say we have srm450's and 350's....

i would go with the stereo reciever (or just ebay an amp) and then jbl's or boston acoustics (i like what both sound like when eq'ed for the space)
 
Of course there were expensive they were in an Apple store !!!
I have a really nice set of Boston Acoustics on my desk here at work they constantly blast me with everything from chillout to Hardcore, Mozart to Metal. Biggest draw back, I had to turn down the bass as I was rattling the accountants pencil drawer too much. < her desk is in the office next to mine we share a wall between us, in more ways than one :twisted: >
At home I used to use my surround sound reciever/amp for my computer, then I had kids and I kept waking up the Baby, my wife made me buy a smaller set of speakers. So now I use a set of Acoustic Logic sattelites and sub, I don't like the nearly as much as my BA's at work.
the ones you have at work sound nice, what are they called and about how much did they run you?
 
the ones you have at work sound nice, what are they called and about how much did they run you?


They are Boston Acoustic BA735 digital. Cost ? They came in with a donated computer, practically brand new. The original owner didn't think they worked. Thier digital and have an RCA to 1/8" jack on them for hooking into the SPDIF I hooked up an 1/8" to 1/8" cable plugged them into my dedicated SPDIF port, and they work like a dream. That's the world of Non-profit theatre !
 
The article is correct however, the newer little bose cubes are a wonderful exercise in digital processing... not in speaker build quality.

While I don't like Bose in general (there's an old joke in the sound industry, "No highs, no lows, must be Bose!"), I will say you shouldn't knock the exercise in processing. Take a listen to a Meyer MM-4 speaker with its processor, and then see what it sounds like without the processor. They do some crazy psycho-acoustic stuff with bandpass delays and all sorts of other insanity that make it sound MUCH better than a box that size and shape has any business sounding. It's all in the execution.

--A
 
I have a set of Altec Lansing speakers, and they really pack a punch. And the sound is just great. They're a model that's not made any more, but you can pretty much count on Altec Lansing for good stuff. My set has two speakers with 2 1/2 or 3 inch speakers (don't want to take them apart!), and a very nice down-firing subwoofer. They can really fill up my room. The sub is really powerful. They came with a Dell computer, about 6 or 7 years ago, and they're still going strong! And then I come to Bucknell and my TD has them in his office, hooked up to his mac. And this guy is really careful about what speakers he uses, he's built a bunch of speakers for the theater, but he still keeps these little beauties as his desk speakers.
 
Those are the ones that I want...yeah, that's a really good set. And considering that my set is only 40W and it fills my room, you should be all set. I like Altec Lansing's vertical driver alignment idea, it works well. One of my friends got a smaller new Altec system, and it still blows mine out of the water.
 
Yup. My TD told me about that link. Amazing how so many of the sound companies are tied together in different ways.
 
I'd still go with the Altec Lansings, due to my experience with them. I also like the vertical driver alignment better.

With the audio card, Amazon only puts those bundles there so that you spend more money. It's definitely not something that the manufacturer said "these speakers sound better if you have this audio card," but more like someone saying "Ha! If we put a sound card on this page, maybe more people will buy the sound card!" Take the sound card for example. if you go to the page for the sound card on amazon dot com, you can easily see what I'm talking about. They list a webcam as the bundled item for a sound card. That's an example of amazon's bundling. In my opinion, they do a much better job with their book pairings than their "stuff" pairings.

That aside, it is a very nice audio card. The only thing that I woudn't get it for is the re-equalization (I think that's what it does). When I do get a new audio system, I want it to be perfectly flat, from 40 or 60 Hz all the way up to 20kHz. I have a friend who built his own speakers for his room and they're flat 60Hz to 20kHz, and, with a little lower-end EQ from a 31-band on the computer, he's got straight 20Hz-20kHz flat response.

And keep in mind that for both of the systems that you're looking for, you only need 2.1 stereo sound.
 
yeah I was looking at the page and realized getting a $30 card would do me fine since I don't want to convert my mp3s to some odd proprietary format to get the most out of the soundcard.
 
That too. It's amazing what lengths people will go to so that you can only use their card or their player or their techology. Another example, the Sony music store has a proprietary format, and a proprietary player, and they give their free music cards out in big bundles to companies that do promos at schools and such. They then give out the cards, the students download all the sony software to get the music, download the one song that they can get with the card, then buy others because they already have the software, and then they have to get the sony player if they want to take it with them. Brilliant marketing scheme.
 

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