Recommend me some good PC speakers....
Discussion
Creative Gigaworks T20. About £45 off amazon, and sound excellent for their size. Only annoyance is the very bright blue LED on the front, easily fixed with a little blob of blu-tac.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/multimedia/review/20...
http://www.trustedreviews.com/multimedia/review/20...
No idea if they work with Windows or Linux (they should do I guess - they are USB speakers) but the Apple-sold Harman/Kardon 'soundsticks' are bloody good, and cheap at that, for what is effectively hi-fi sound (unless you are a hardcore audiophile I guess).
I'm making the assumption here that, because they are a self-powered speaker set connected by USB, that there's some standard HID class for speakers and even though they are very Mac they will work with Windows or Linux.
However the reason I recommend them (apart from the fact that I'm listening to them now) is that I popped into our local Bang & Olufsen shop (I like the design of their kit, though anything other than the basics are out of my price range, I have one of their LCD TVs and a couple of their telephones) during mid-week when it was empty and tried out some weird music on their mega-money Dalek-shaped speakers. They sounded incredible, but you'd expect that for the price. I got chatting to the sales lad, and mentioned that I liked the design of their cube speakers, and wondered if they'd be easy to interface to a Mac.
Turns out he was an Apple fan as well, so we chatted about Macs for a bit (mainly the iPhone, which I'd just hacked, this was last autumn when they were rare) and I told him I currently had the Harman/Kardon soundsticks and subwoofer on my main Mac. He simply said 'don't bother with our loudspeakers unless you can afford the two top models' and went on to explain that a few of his audiophile mates compared a Mac playing a reference CD through the Harman/Kardon soundsticks at normal volumes to B&O hi-fi setups, and you had to pay serious money to get better sound. They were *all* blown away by the quality of the sound from the Mac soundsticks.
Given that the kit (subwoofer, two sticks (each with 4 drivers), power cables / adaptors and USB cabling) was about £120 years ago when I bought mine, which isn't a LOT for speakers, I thoroughly recommend it.
I'm no audiophile and like to laugh at the guys who buy £400 wooden knobs for their amplifiers and have directional cabling for alternating current. But I usually listen to esoteric music on the move through an iPhone and Etymotic Research ER-4 earphones (lossless encoded music), that's a pretty damn high bar to set. I know what sounds good and what sounds bad and whilst I'm no 'golden ear', I pretty much only ever listen to music at home now through the Soundsticks...
If they work with normal modern operating systems (i.e. there's a generic driver class for USB speakers - there's nothing Mac-specific about the Harman/Kardon kit AFAIK) then I thoroughly recommend them. They may look a bit out of place due to their 'Mac-ness' - the clear perspex is a bit turn-of-the-millenium-Apple (they look odd next to all the aluminium of my modern Macs) but they sound bloody excellent. Not overpriced either IMO.
I'm making the assumption here that, because they are a self-powered speaker set connected by USB, that there's some standard HID class for speakers and even though they are very Mac they will work with Windows or Linux.
However the reason I recommend them (apart from the fact that I'm listening to them now) is that I popped into our local Bang & Olufsen shop (I like the design of their kit, though anything other than the basics are out of my price range, I have one of their LCD TVs and a couple of their telephones) during mid-week when it was empty and tried out some weird music on their mega-money Dalek-shaped speakers. They sounded incredible, but you'd expect that for the price. I got chatting to the sales lad, and mentioned that I liked the design of their cube speakers, and wondered if they'd be easy to interface to a Mac.
Turns out he was an Apple fan as well, so we chatted about Macs for a bit (mainly the iPhone, which I'd just hacked, this was last autumn when they were rare) and I told him I currently had the Harman/Kardon soundsticks and subwoofer on my main Mac. He simply said 'don't bother with our loudspeakers unless you can afford the two top models' and went on to explain that a few of his audiophile mates compared a Mac playing a reference CD through the Harman/Kardon soundsticks at normal volumes to B&O hi-fi setups, and you had to pay serious money to get better sound. They were *all* blown away by the quality of the sound from the Mac soundsticks.
Given that the kit (subwoofer, two sticks (each with 4 drivers), power cables / adaptors and USB cabling) was about £120 years ago when I bought mine, which isn't a LOT for speakers, I thoroughly recommend it.
I'm no audiophile and like to laugh at the guys who buy £400 wooden knobs for their amplifiers and have directional cabling for alternating current. But I usually listen to esoteric music on the move through an iPhone and Etymotic Research ER-4 earphones (lossless encoded music), that's a pretty damn high bar to set. I know what sounds good and what sounds bad and whilst I'm no 'golden ear', I pretty much only ever listen to music at home now through the Soundsticks...
If they work with normal modern operating systems (i.e. there's a generic driver class for USB speakers - there's nothing Mac-specific about the Harman/Kardon kit AFAIK) then I thoroughly recommend them. They may look a bit out of place due to their 'Mac-ness' - the clear perspex is a bit turn-of-the-millenium-Apple (they look odd next to all the aluminium of my modern Macs) but they sound bloody excellent. Not overpriced either IMO.
Plotloss said:
I think JBL offer something around that price point and generally its difficult to go wrong with JBL gear.
I beg to differ with one example - the On-Time hoop iPod alarm clock. Had three in a row and they all randomly crashed (LCD would get spattered with corrupt data and the machine would lock up). Obviously, the primary function of an alarm clock is to reliably tell the time and wake you up when necessary... to wake up 2 hours late for work with the JBL screen covered in random garbage was irritating the first time, but after 5+ times with each replacement unit, it was pretty clear it was a design fault with that particular product IMO.(the obvious potential reason - dirty power - doesn't really hold up when the Bose Wave that it 'replaced' for a short time was fine, and the 11 computers in my house not having any trouble with dirty power...)
This however was a software design fault in an iPod alarm clock. So their normal speakers should be OK, and it did sound reasonable (not a patch on the Wave though)
JBL Creatures have a great sound and look funky to boot:
http://www.jbl.com/home/products/product_detail.as...
Normally I'm running the sound through the stereo though, as it's in the same room..
http://www.jbl.com/home/products/product_detail.as...
Normally I'm running the sound through the stereo though, as it's in the same room..
Mr E said:
Personally. Set of Logitech Z-5450 wired into the linux box and the 360. They're very good indeed but weren't £70 unfortunately.
I have the same setup (360 attached to the VGA on my 24" monitor
)Logitech Z-10s are supposed to be very good and are around £70
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2006/08/28/logitech_z10_inte...
Church of Noise said:
Funk said:
Normally I'm running the sound through the stereo though, as it's in the same room..
This is what I would recommend too.Sound quality of a stereo system is generally better then that of those smallish PC speakers, and you only need to buy another cable...
Nad amp and B&W speakers in the lounge.
However, the pc needs to sound half decent too.
No one has mentioned the Gigaworks T20 /T40 yet ?
Furyous said:
Church of Noise said:
Funk said:
Normally I'm running the sound through the stereo though, as it's in the same room..
This is what I would recommend too.Sound quality of a stereo system is generally better then that of those smallish PC speakers, and you only need to buy another cable...
Nad amp and B&W speakers in the lounge.
However, the pc needs to sound half decent too.
No one has mentioned the Gigaworks T20 /T40 yet ?
Mr E said:
Furyous said:
Church of Noise said:
Funk said:
Normally I'm running the sound through the stereo though, as it's in the same room..
This is what I would recommend too.Sound quality of a stereo system is generally better then that of those smallish PC speakers, and you only need to buy another cable...
Nad amp and B&W speakers in the lounge.
However, the pc needs to sound half decent too.
No one has mentioned the Gigaworks T20 /T40 yet ?
It's low enough to be almost unnoticeable, but I still know it's there.
Zad said:
Just plug in an amp and decent speakers from Richer Sounds or somewhere. I have a couple of oldish Technics 3-way speakers plugged into a £10 5-Watt amp and it totally blows 'computer speakers' out of the water.
It depends what you class as "computer speakers". The Logitechs I have could probably be used in a small home theatre setup to be honest. My only gripe is that they're small satellites with a big sub, but apart from that they handle pretty much everything I throw at them with aplomb.Are they as good as the "proper kit" downstairs? No. Are they good enough? Absolutely.
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