what am i missing?

[Kanifee]

Ive recently come into possession of a Phillips FR 996 - AV receiver and am in the process of putting together a system to power my audio on my pc i used to run a Sony but surround sound, i did not.

All i used to use were a couple of massive JBL house speakers and they sort of just filled the house with noise so surround wasn't an issue in fact it would have been pointless because there was just to much noise
now im moving more towards the quality instead of quantity, well as much as i can without having a DENON or TEAC.

Ive never in my short but fruitfull pc life of 6 years bought or owned a sound card of any kind and arn't privy first hand to the benefits of them so am i missing out on a lot? or hindering my self by not having one and will the amp and speakers be in vain?

One last thing, how are Kenwood speakers these days don't hear much about kenwood any more, at least not like when i was a wee whipper snapper.

cheers fellas!

 

[daz]

well as much as i can without having a DENON or TEAC.

~~~
One last thing, how are Kenwood speakers these days don't hear much about kenwood any more, at least not like when i was a wee whipper snapper.

cheers fellas!

Hmmm.

Denon or Teac AFAIK aren't high-end hi-fi. Kenwood speakers I would stay away from. Amps are OK though.

JBL on ther other hand are pretty renowned for decent speakers. They mainly do PA stuff these days though.

At the end of the day, sound is subjective so you want to get what sounds good to you. If you take a look at Richer Sounds I'd recommend that you should check out Mission, Kef and B&W speakers, they should be in your price range and different manufacturers have slightly different signature sounds so you'll want to hear them before buying.

 

[Kanifee]

good advice cheers think ill strole down to the hifi place we have a richer sounds in the toon.
so am i best getting a sound card or will my onboared take care of the audio to send to the amp well enough on its own its the alc889a for the g33m-s2

 

[daz]

It depends if you're going to be digitally outputting the sound from your sound card to your amp... if so, then a more expensive sound card might not be worthwhile. If you're going to be using analogue outputs or your current sound card doesn't have digital outputs, I'd get a more expensive one.

 

[Kanifee]

i was thinking about using digitel connection am i right in thinking that it is just a toslink/optical cable or are the coaxial to?
never understood coax seems the same as rca so how is it digital?

 

[C64]

Kenwood make good cd players but the amps and speakers i would steer clear of.
pc speakers are a lot better these days take a look at a quality
2.1 set i'd say they will sound better than any budget seperates rig
run through a stereo to phono.
This logitech z4 certainly sounds crisper than my £1200 worth of seperates
if i run it from soundcard.

 

[daz]

K

2.1 set i'd say they will sound better than any budget seperates rig
run through a stereo to phono.
This logitech z4 certainly sounds crisper than my £1200 worth of seperates

There's either something wrong with your ears or something wrong with your seperates.

To the OP - repost this thread in the hi-fi forum, people know about systems in there and you'll get lots of great advice.

 

[james.miller]

thats funny lol

 

[C64]

There's either something wrong with your ears or something wrong with your seperates.

To the OP - repost this thread in the hi-fi forum, people know about systems in there and you'll get lots of great advice.

Ok here's £51 go get me something that sounds better than the z4's
for that price and that includes delivery.All joking aside it depends what budget your talking obviously it's not as good as a second hand arcam alpha or similar but if we are talking brand new £40-£50 amp £50 speakers and so on as for my separates were quite expensive but are old
about 6 years old gale mini monitors mark 2 eltax liberty 3+ and technics class a power amp goes loud and everything but just isn't crystal or as forward sounding as the z4's through the soundcard stereo out.
It is definitely not as good as the z4's and that technics amp was £300 about 7 years ago i have no reason to lie or make anything up.problem with separates is you have to carefully match them.

can i ask what you base this on which pc speakers have you
owned and what separates do you own i very much doubt you have any experience in true budget separates and i bet the last pc speakers you owned were a long time ago well things have moved on pc speakers are better
than anything low end separates wise.They may not go as loud but you can
bet they are much clearer crisper sounding than the cheap amp and speakers.

There's a good reason a lot of people own 2.1 speakers when they have the money for amps and speakers.I too was a staunch believer that pc speakers simply cannot be better than separates until i actually bought a set of these
recent 2.1's the sound quality is simply breathtaking and is as crisp as something 10 times it's pricetag.

 

[daz]

PC 2.1 speakers by their definition (and especially the Z4s) are going to have a hollowed out sound in the mid-range, a studio engineer friend called this the "rock 'n' roll smile", because of the way it looks if you setup a graphic EQ to emulate this on a full-range system. You have two speakers with tiny little drivers and then a 6" or 8" sub in a ported enclosure that has to make everything below 500Hz. It just doesn't work very well for the music I listen to.

Like I said in one of the first posts, sound is subjective and some people enjoy this sound. I prefer a more natural sound myself, which is why such systems are totally not suitable for me (or at least the systems with decent mid-range drivers are approaching the cost of decent seperates).

I've got a musical fidelity A1 and some old yamaha NS10s for speakers... hardly top of the range stuff but chosen because i like the sound. I've recommended JBL Creatures speakers to people who've been searching for computer speaker systems on a budget of £50 before, because they are reasonably decent for the cash, so I'm not a snob. But this OP came asking specifically about seperates.

I had some Eltax Liberty 5+ and whilst they were decent enough for the price they were really too boomy at the bottom end for my liking. Eltax and Gale brands are both owned by Richer Sounds, so tend to get pushed by the salespeople in there over brands that they don't own, but yet perhaps sound better to a lot of ears; like I mentioned Mission, Kef, B&W et al.

The Eltax 5+ were coupled with an old early 80's Kenwood amp. You'd be surprised how good the Japanese stuff was from this era (late 70's/early 80's) and how good it still sounds today... they were incredibly over-engineered. I've seen good Rotel stuff go for £20 on ebay and if you're ever at a car boot sale and see anything like that, give it a good feel because you can generally get a good idea of the quality of the amplifier from its weight (heavier amp = better power supply).

If you enjoy the sound of your Z4s then that's wicked though.

 

[C64]

yes the midrange is an issue but you hardly notice you just hear
the crystal clearness of them but then that's what separates are for
if you want smooth sounding mid range you use an amp and cd player.
You just don't hear the details on low end separates i am genuinely hearing sounds in music i have listened to for years that i never knew existed in the records which you just won't hear in badly matched low end hi fi.
But then i would never use a pc soley as my music system the occasional mp3
but mostly gaming and watching films is fine without the quality midrange.

 

[james.miller]

everythign benifits for a well balanced response. low end seperates would still be better than a pair of budget pc speakers. £100 would get you a very nice amp+speaker combo, something like a denon pma-255uk and a pair of mission m71i's off the bay. you dont have to spend a lot to improve on any set of pc speakers

 

[Kanifee]

Well fellas just to let you know ive got the amp setup and must say im quite impressed with it it's a large improvement over the old setup i had, much clearer deeper sound that seems to hold its richness when i leave the room and are not in direct contact with the speakers.
Though sad to say still need to sort out some decent speakers so i should be even more pleased soon as i pair a good set with it.