Tiny desk speakers

dirtychinchilla

dirtychinchilla

dirtychinchilla

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Woking
Good afternoon,

We have a baby arriving shortly and I am graciously giving up my office room for her and being moved into a corner of the kitchen. My desk is going to be very small, maybe only 80 x 50 cm, so I need some really compact speakers.

I know that when it comes to sound quality, compact rarely equals good, but I would like them to be decent.

Therefore, I was hoping for some recommendations. To give an idea of the order of size, something that was 10 x 10 x 10 cm would be great!

Budget is probably £150 as I have my current NAD amp and two sets of speakers to sell, most likely.

An alternative plan, which I thought of while typing, is to organise the speakers in the kitchen and somehow broadcast from my computer over to the speakers. Probably wouldn't be great for Teams calls though!

Thanks for your help,

dirtychinchilla
 
When I was forced to go compact, I used a small soundbar that clipped to the monitor.

Sound quality was pretty crap, but it did what I needed it to.

Your budget is vastly more than I spent, but I'm sure better quality clip ons also exist.
 
Headphones - doesn't impact others or wake your baby; con: you won't hear the baby crying

Speakers: you'll still be able to hear others around you; con: speakers will wake your baby


I think you can see the obvious issue here; no matter the scenario the common thread is the baby; I say keep the speakers and headphones instead of getting a baby :cry:
 
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Or use some logic and realise some small speakers in the corner of the kitchen aren’t going to wake up a sleeping baby in another room, most likely upstairs.

Our baby often sleeps through us watching films and TV shows in the same room :cry:
 
Anything 10*10*10 is going to be useless. At 50*80 you have plenty of space provided you use it properly. My own desk is 50*90 (well the smaller part of the L shape) and I have speakers, streamer, dac and a 40" monitor + kb&mouse on it.

I use these - https://www.amazon.fr/PreSonus-Ence...s-deals&sprefix=iloud,todays-deals,76&sr=1-10

Powered rather then true active, but for the price point I have zero complaints. Granted I do run them through a 1200€ dac.
 
oh he meant 10cm.... okay then .. just get a portable bluetooth speaker for about £50
there's bound to be one with a 3.5mm input there you just need a 3.5mm stereo jack > 3.5mm stereo jack cable


Flor_Fina said:
Powered rather then true active, but for the price point I have zero complaints. Granted I do run them through a 1200€ dac.
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why would you run those speakers on a 1200 dac? there's better studio monitors, much better that don't cost a whole lot more

I had the first gen for awhile, not too bad, but the amp in the left speaker hummed a bit, which I thought was a ground loop
 
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I have some old, tiny HP Multimedia Speakers 2.0 USB which come out for emergency use. They are remarkable for their size and very cheap (and I just found some for sale, elsewhere). Not necessarily a long term solution, and not HiFi in any way, shape or form, but perhaps a useful, wallet-friendly interim measure. Then you can put the difference towards a pram. :D Congrats on the family upgrade though.
 
arknor said:
oh he meant 10cm.... okay then .. just get a portable bluetooth speaker for about £50
there's bound to be one with a 3.5mm input there you just need a 3.5mm stereo jack > 3.5mm stereo jack cable



why would you run those speakers on a 1200 dac? there's better studio monitors, much better that don't cost a whole lot more

I had the first gen for awhile, not too bad, but the amp in the left speaker hummed a bit, which I thought was a ground loop
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Height constraints lead me to the Presonus. I run them through the RME because it's there. It's also my headphone amp.
 
Andrew_McP said:
I have some old, tiny HP Multimedia Speakers 2.0 USB which come out for emergency use. They are remarkable for their size and very cheap (and I just found some for sale, elsewhere). Not necessarily a long term solution, and not HiFi in any way, shape or form, but perhaps a useful, wallet-friendly interim measure. Then you can put the difference towards a pram. :D Congrats on the family upgrade though.
Click to expand...

Thanks!!!!

So I have gone for a halfway solution. In the kitchen, I'm going to install proper speakers with an amplifier connected to an Amazon Echo, so while I'm in the kitchen I can get proper sound if I want it.

I bought the Creative Pebble V3 for the desk, so while I'm on a Teams call or whatever I can use those, and then when out, I can put music back on the Echo.

It's not ideal, but I have mapped out my desk space and I'm horrified by how tiny it is!
 
Obvs too late, but when I needed small desk speakers, I just ended up with the smallest DALI desktops, the Zensor Pico (14cm x 19cm), these are the smallest footprint I could find without too much compromise and are great for nearfield listening.. I 3D Printed some wedges to angle them up to suit the sitting distance. THe amp (Small TEAC) fits under the monitor..

The newer "Spektor 1" are the same size.. I did them throw a BK Gemini II sub under the desk, it's very compact but is a perfect match and very musical..

I've got a friend who spent a bit more and has the on-wall DALI Oberon either side of his monitor on the wall, he has a tiny/minimal desk and the on-wall speakers look really good either side and offer excellent stereo separation.
 
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