do people seriously buy those logitech/creative mini satalite things?

[DRZ]

Yeah i know but it just seems that the original poster missed the idea of these setups; their fairly cheap (Brilliant sound for the price?) The base is all handled by the Subwoofer so the speakers them selves are only dealing with the mid and high which they deal with fine. Mabye not as well as a single speaker that costs more than the whole setup, but well.
Just seems like the original poster is missing the point?

Not quite. The sub will almost certainly be forced to handle mids as well because of the physical size of the drivers in the sattelites.

Mid-range is directional unlike deep bass (as far as the layman is concerned) which means you can kiss goodbye to any decent imaging...

EDIT:

GIGO, of course. But if you dont alter the signal it cant sound "worse" at all - cheap speakers dont add in information that wasnt there to make a poorly encoded MP3 sound better than it is.

Besides, when pushed, an awful lot of people cannot discern a well encoded 128kbps MP3 from the uncompressed original.

 

[mdixson]

Not quite. The sub will almost certainly be forced to handle mids as well because of the physical size of the drivers in the sattelites.

Mid-range is directional unlike deep bass (as far as the layman is concerned) which means you can kiss goodbye to any decent imaging...

Ok i see that it just seems strange then with the whole "THX" tag, does this mean nothing then, as from what i have read it means they have been tested to meet a standard that is set by Lucas Film?

 

[fish99]

Edit: also most of us are listening to mp3 quality recording so surely they will sound worse the better the setup?

Not at all, MP3s ripped well and encoded well from the original recording at a decent bit rate (192 kbps is plenty really) sound very good. Very hard to distinguish them from the original recording in a blind test.

 

[DRZ]

Ok i see that it just seems strange then with the whole "THX" tag, does this mean nothing then, as from what i have read it means they have been tested to meet a standard that is set by Lucas Film?

THX isnt worth the **** on my shoe.

 

[mdixson]

LOL i thought as much, makes me laugh when i walk into a cinema screen and see them proudly displaying it. I still really want to know what it actually means? No one seems to know...

 

[VaderDSL]

Eventually when I have a bit of spare cash I ideally want a decent 2.0 hi-fi system for music and a good 5.1 setup on my PC I don't know if its me, but I use my PC for gaming and my stereo for music

And as for Bose ...

Buy
Other
Steroe
Equipment

 

[Caged]

Bose have never made anything that sounds good. Ever.

The Wave Radio is good for the size, but not for the price.

That's about the only good thing they've made outside of commercial / installed audio.

 

[mdixson]

LOL ok i get the Bose thing just seemed really nice in their show off stand at an expo in london, oh well i always knew it was overpriced turd deep down

I agree with the fact that my pc setup is mainly for gaming, and that if i could a good stereo would be my choise for the living room (currently just the tv speakers :O)

 

[tom_nieto]

THX in a cinema means something. To have their standards in such a large room is quite impressive. The home setps and especially the PC setups mean very little, as the testing criteria are so slack.

As far as the mp3 thing goes, my system is perfectly listenable to when playing mp3s, but for serious listening CD/vinyl is unbeatable. A good amp and speaker will still make mp3 sound good, but it will excell when fed a proper source.

 

[mdixson]

THX in a cinema means something. To have their standards in such a large room is quite impressive. The home setps and especially the PC setups mean very little, as the testing criteria are so slack.

As far as the mp3 thing goes, my system is perfectly listenable to when playing mp3s, but for serious listening CD/vinyl is unbeatable. A good amp and speaker will still make mp3 sound good, but it will excell when fed a proper source.

Yeah i was not having a dig at mp3's, just pointing out that surely you could hear the digital-ness, for use of a better word, when on a really good system?

 

[fish99]

Yeah i was not having a dig at mp3's, just pointing out that surely you could hear the digital-ness, for use of a better word, when on a really good system?

I get the feeling you are speculating rather than pointing out. Try it. Rip some tracks from original CDs as wavs and as 320 kbps and 192 kbps MP3s and see if you can hear any difference, on any setup. Maybe after a lot of very careful listenning on very good headphones you might just be able to tell the difference if you have well trained ears.

 

[Dr.EM]

The way MP3 sounds to different people does vary as it works by exploiting the unusual hearing system we have (mainly in that we cannot hear 2 or more very similar frequencies at once, and so mp3 sort of "comb filters" extremely close frequency bands to remove excess information). As such, it just depends on how your ears are. To me, yes, an mp3 encoded with LAME at 192 sounds very similar to the original (encoded on my lesser quality encoder I can definately tell the difference though). Some people can easily tell the difference though, and others use 96k with no qualms, it just depends how your ears are.

Most PC speakers are manufactured with very little consideration for acoustic design, they are just built to work as cheaply as possible.

 

[fish99]

You will definitely pass this test then -

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17565580

 

[Dr.EM]

Hmm, I have downloaded it, but don't seem to have an ISO file. I have a large BIN file and a cue sheet, the BIN file is unreconised format. Is this for win XP only? It's supposed to play in a CD player I hope?

 

[fish99]

Most burning software can read bin/cue, it's just another cd image format, just point your software to the cue file and it should do the rest.

 

[GSDog]

I went from the top of the range PC speakers (Logitech Z-5500) to a hifi setup and I couldn't believe the difference in sound. I was always on here fighting off hifi'ers as they kept telling me PC speakers were not as good as a hifi setup.
PC speakers will never be as good as I nice hifi setup. The build quality was terrible on the PC speakers and most of the money were spent on 5 cheap speakers instead of 2 good hifi speakers and an amp.

Well worth getting a hifi.

 

[Dr.EM]

And there you have it from someone who used to own what is generally considered one of the better computer speaker sets

Hmm, looks like I wasted a CD. Ended up with 4 seconds of nothing
Oh well, I may just experiment with it myself. Only this computer has the good convertor, but this computer also has cheap PC speakers and i've not actually heard the well encoded mp3s on my Hi-Fi.

 

[Drizmod]

Great setup. I know its slightly off topic but where did you get your desk from? Ive been looking for a desk like that for ages and cant find one

 

[TooNice]

Gigaworks for movies/games.

Headphones for music.

Problem solved [Sure I love my music.. but I also enjoy movies and games]

 

[Firegod]

Hmm interesting thread, I must say I've had my creative soundwork 5.1 speakers for many many many years now. When I first bought them they cost nearly £200 but now they are obsolete and I probably would be lucky to get £40 for them.

But what I find interesting is that people say a decent stereo setup is better than a 5.1 setup. One question, do they give as much bass as a 5.1 setup saying you are missing a woofer?? If I was to say to all the hi-fi people, I have £250 for some new speakers (and I was going to buy just a newer 5.1 setup) what would you recommend hi-fi wise? I guess that would be a budget for two decent speakers and an amp... Could you get a sub in there at that budget too?