When buying speakers..

IwantanewPC

IwantanewPC

IwantanewPC

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What should I be looking for?

Someone told me PC speakers are PC speakers and it doesn't matter. I know the quality of sound comes from the sound card but surely the speakers have something to do with that too?

And should you get speakers with a subwoofer?
 
PC speakers cover a big quality range from awful to really quite decent, but don't expect them to match hi-fi quality.

They do have different characteristic than hi-fi speakers. Hi-fi speakers have tweeters for the highs, woofers for the mids, and often don't need a subwoofer because the woofers go down quite deep. PC speakers usually have a single driver instead of a woofer and tweeter, and as a consequence they don't go down very deep, so it's more important to have a seperate subwoofer. PC subs generally go higher than hi-fi subs, to make up for the lack of mids on PC speakers. A lot of people still find the mids quite lacking on PC speakers though.

Definitely go for a set with a subwoofer if you have room for one.

You can of course use hi-fi equipment with a PC if you want. You buy an amp (stereo or 5.1), connect it to your soundcard, get some nearfield mini bookshelf speakers (shielded) and off you go. You can buy used with confidence too when it comes to hi-fi gear cause it's reliable. So it's not necessarily more expensive than the best PC speakers.
 
Just out of interest, say I had £100, what would be the best thing to go for? I've got no sound card, only a 5.1 onboard chip (although I don't really want a surround system). I play games and also enjoy my music. Should I just get a 2.1 system, should I get a soundcard and a 2.1 system, should I get some Hi Fi speakers and an amp (or whatever it is I need)?
 
Tricky one. £100 won't get much hi-fi gear, you're looking at more like £150 to get amp + 2 bookshelf speakers + the cables you need + delivery.

I think you should probably get something like the Acoustic Energy Aego M 2.1 Speakers (£88), keep using your onboard sound for now, and then buy an X-Fi XtremeMusic when you've got some more money and when they've come down in price a bit. Or if you really want a soundcard now then you could look at the Audigy 2 SE OEM which is under £20.

If you want to go down the hi-fi route, you'll need to get looking on that well known auction site to see what's available. If the speakers are going on your desk, you'll want something smaller than full bookshelf speakers, and if you have a CRT screen, you'll need speakers that are shielded. Buying hi-fi gear is a bit of a minefield though, cause there's just so much stuff out there and it's not always easy to find out how good it is.
 
valerian said:
pc speakers can match and in a lot of cases surpass hi fi speakers, if you get some good ones you wont use your hi fi, matched with a quality sound card of course
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PC speakers can only surpass very cheap hi-fi systems. I've owned a set of z-5500's, and i can definitely say they are no where near as good as an reasonable entry level hi-fi.
 
There are hundreds of bargains about on the bay and on hi-fi forums. Old doesn't mean bad if you're talking about hi-fi. £100 should buy you a rather decent set of speakers and an amp. Don't forget to factor in cabling though.
 
Whats a cheap 5.1 set to start? Mainly interested in it being a smallish AV amp that will take coax/toslink & either 6xRCA or 3xstereo connectors for linking to analogue out on PC. Need to be able to plug consoles AND PC in.
Speakers to go with will be needed too :)

Whats the above likely to cost? Im generally very happy with PC speakers so semi-ok entry level will likely do me nicely.

Stuff im likely to find on the bay would be appreciated.
 
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valerian said:
pc speakers can match and in a lot of cases surpass hi fi speakers, if you get some good ones you wont use your hi fi, matched with a quality sound card of course
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HAHHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA ROFLcopter

No chance in hell. I have owned a set of crappy ibm speakers, creative 5.1 digital 5700's and then the logi z5500s. The logi's were amazing speakers, especially for games and films, but for music they were what 'most' people would classify as good. As in, they have LOADS of bass. Actually, INSANE amounts. Plus the higher frequencies are very accentuated and harsh.

Overall, crap for music, unless for a house party :)

I purchased a hi-fi setup over xmas:

- Arcam delta 290 amp (older version of alpha 9 but as good) for £100 off the bay. Please try to get an amp like this, as it is truly stunning.
- Monitor audio bronze B2 speakers for £180 (brand new). Great speakers, but for around £80-100 you can get some nice mordaunt short speakers.
- Some ixos speaker wire @£2.30 a metre, which is good enough.

I have the amp hooked up to my emu 0404 soundcard, that is heavily modified, and will have new sanyo oscon, and BG caps on it tomorrow, and the sound is truly stunning. Great source, but you could get a cheap audigy 2zs for ~£30 which will be fine for what you use.

Or just go for the package fish recommend, get the aego m 2.1's and an audigy 2zs for about £110 in total. Great entry step into the world of good quality music.

What's your budget mate, i could give you some reccomendations ? :D
 
I also just purchased my first hi-fi system late last year. Didn't have a lot to spend so I went with used stuff off ebay and got recommendations from AV Forum members. Ended up with-

Eltax Monitor 3 bookshelf speakers (£60 unused)
Marantz PM66-SE amp (£80 used but mint)
Marantz CD-5000 (£30 used)
Atacama SE24 stands (£28 used)

All from the bay. So, paid about £250 total (including cabling and delivery), compared to the new price of about £700 for that lot. The amp and stands are well rated. The CDP and speakers are towards the better end of the budget sector.

Got the amp/speakers wired up to xbox/dvd player as well as the CD player. The sound quality is stunning, not just for music which is of couse the main reason I bought it all, but for films and games too. Even though it's only stereo, films and games sound miles better than the £200 Acoustic Solutions 5.1 system I used to have. Quality really does make all the difference. Music is beautifully natural and detailed too, and it's got me back into buying CDs and listenning to new bands (Muse are my latest discovery).
 
fish99 said:
I also just purchased my first hi-fi system late last year. Didn't have a lot to spend so I went with used stuff off ebay and got recommendations from AV Forum members. Ended up with-

Eltax Monitor 3 bookshelf speakers (£60 unused)
Marantz PM66-SE amp (£80 used but mint)
Marantz CD-5000 (£30 used)
Atacama SE24 stands (£28 used)

Music is beautifully natural and detailed too, and it's got me back into buying CDs and listenning to new bands (Muse are my latest discovery).
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Same with me. AV forum members were helpful, along with some members in the hi-fi section here. I have doubled my CD collection in the past 3 months, up from 35 to over 70 now. You cannot beat the sound of a good hi-fi. Plus my marantz cd-6£ (£35 off the bay) will probably rival most players in the £400 range. With the huge amount of modifications im going to do to the player over the easter holiday, it'l rival most players under the 1K mark. All for a cost of around £250 :eek:
I'm going to sticj with this player for a long time.

Go for a marantz CD-63 or 63SE off the bay for ~£50 and you won't be disappointed. I'm hardly using my emu soundcard at the moment, as CD's just sound sublime.
 
I would have thought that the logitech Z-5500 is better then most hi-fis.. Come on, if its set up properly the sound quality has got to be better??
 
speedy2004 said:
I would have thought that the logitech Z-5500 is better then most hi-fis.. Come on, if its set up properly the sound quality has got to be better??
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Why? Based on what exactly? Z5500 are £200 and for that you get a sub, 5 satellites, an amp (built into sub), a decoder (built into sub), a control centre, a remote control (IIRC) and a load of wires. So you're looking at £15-20 per satellite.

A half decent set of budget hi-fi bookshelf speakers is say £200 (you can pay thousands for the better stuff) for which you get just the two speakers. So that's £100 per speaker. So they're 5-6 times more expensive per speaker.

Sound quality is a pretty straight forward science - the better the components used by the manufacturer, the better the sound quality, and better components cost more, so if you're spending 5-6 times as much per speaker, they'll sound a heck of a lot better.

Ontop of that Logitech satellites are 1 way, meaning they just have a single driver covering the whole frequency range. There's a very good reason why real hi-fi speakers have seperate tweeters and woofers - because it gives much better coverage of the whole audibly frequency range. PC speakers are usually lacking in reproduction of deep mids and the top highs.

And finally Logitech have only been making speakers for about 5 years now, whereas most hi-fi speaker manufacturers have decades of experience.

Same goes for the amp - the amp in the Z5500 probably costs about £40, whereas a decent hi-fi amp will be £200-300 minimum. Plus most PC soundcards have pretty lousy sound quality.

I can only guess you're just using the term hi-fi for any music system, like those crappy midi/micro systems they sell in argos (which are in no way high-fidelity), but they're not hi-fi. Hi-fi means hi-fi seperates.
 
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