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What speakers should I buy?

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well thats the thing, these pc speakers are not anywhere near absurd pricing. we are talking damn good value for money these days. the pair i suggested with the 3.5" midrange? 10 years ago you couldn't buy anything like that, let alone for that price. my first pc speakers were a cambridge microworks for $350 in the late 90s. now, those speakers are considered garbage and wouldn't fetch much more than $50. the new version extreme 2.1 uses their home theater line sats and a much larger sub. we aren't talking stupid moronic audiophile stuff like audiophile power cord. this is basic build quality/material quality stuff where you just have to pay a certain amount to satisfy basic mechanical requirements to get quality baseline. below a certain amount you cannot make miracles happen. they just build cr@p. the range i'm talking about is pretty far from an sli setup. this will put out good sound for years. sli will be out of date quite soon.
 
I understand that. There's a difference between quality and "****phile"

You commented on audiophile prices... I gave my opinion on that matter 😛



That being said, I don't understand why, nowadays, anyone would NEED more than a ~$100 speaker setup for home use. The only difference I can tell is the more expensive speakers can usually be turned LOUDER without distortion. WTF is the point?
 
Originally posted by: Jax Omen
I understand that. There's a difference between quality and "****phile"

You commented on audiophile prices... I gave my opinion on that matter 😛



That being said, I don't understand why, nowadays, anyone would NEED more than a ~$100 speaker setup for home use. The only difference I can tell is the more expensive speakers can usually be turned LOUDER without distortion. WTF is the point?
Click to expand...

Nobody "NEED"s more than a $100 speaker setup, but you should probably be glad you can get away with a $100 setup and be perfectly happy. I know I don't have a golden ear or anything, but I still think there's room for improvement in my system that's cost about 100 times the level beyond which YOU can't tell any difference.

There's a lot more to it than volume levels being produced.

It's a lot easier to tell these differences if you're able to do A/B testing of one set of equipment vs. another. I think for most people if you plopped them down in front of a random audio system and asked them if they thought it sounded good, they'd probably say yes. I think that can be due to a number of reasons, some of which are
- people haven't had exposure to higher quality stuff
- source material or something else along the chain is lacking
- systems are not set up well
- audio memory is fairly short so they might not really remember what something sounds like to compare
- they actually can't hear a difference due

I'm no audiophile and I think there's a lot of silliness and misinformation and placebo effect at high budgets, but I've done some significant testing myself of different speakers from the $100/pair range up to $2000/pair range in my own place (and heard sets set up well in stores for $10,000+/pair) and there's definitely more than just higher volume level capabilities between the speakers.

Considering your computer example, I would have to say that spending $1500 on a CPU vs. $1500 on a pair of speakers isn't really a fair comparison. In a couple years a $1500 CPU will be pretty worthless since the technology objectively advances so fast. A $1500 pair of speakers from many years ago will still sound great today. There are advancements in audio, but speakers really hold their value well in comparison. If you go out and do auditioning (section 1.1) and can personally tell the difference and find speakers that really appeal to you, they'll be a solid purchase for you for many years.
 
Originally posted by: Jax Omen
I understand that. There's a difference between quality and "****phile"

You commented on audiophile prices... I gave my opinion on that matter 😛



That being said, I don't understand why, nowadays, anyone would NEED more than a ~$100 speaker setup for home use. The only difference I can tell is the more expensive speakers can usually be turned LOUDER without distortion. WTF is the point?
Click to expand...

? the basic mechanics of speakers has been worked out for quite some time now. you need quality build and components for good sound. there is no magical engineering solution that gets you low smooth tight bass from a weedy 5" "sub" woofer in a tiny flimsy box for instance. its not just louder but accurate reproduction. a singer won't sound right if the speakers have no midrange or tweeters, the bass notes will be nothing more than boomy mush if the sub woofer is inadequate. many cheap speakers make the sub handle much higher notes than it should to try to fill the gap from the inadequate and tiny sat speakers...its all compromised to meet a price and a look and will sound like garbage even at low volumes. but as said, if you are doing nothing more than playing flash games and youtube, sure there won't be a difference. but if you listen to music, there's a definite difference unless you are pretty deaf. we aren't talking the difference between a 1-2k system vs 10k+, there you can say there's rather limited gain if any. but this is on the low end where the difference is drastic. sub $100 are a bit like $20 psu's. you can only shave so much off the price with production efficiency and clever engineering before you are just compromising the product to meet a price.
 
Hmm... maybe my hearing is just terrible 😛

Aside from distortion at higher volumes, I can't even hear much difference between my girlfriend's current $15 2.0 speakers and my PC hooked up to my stereo (cost $150 years ago).

Well, that and the stereo has lost one of it's channels. Don't know how. That's why I'm replacing the (now mono) stereo with some PC speakers 😛
 
or maybe you haven't given good sound a try yet. 150 dollar stereo from years ago qualifies as pretty shoddy sound you know. it makes sense it wouldn't sound much different from her pc speakers. those boom boxes with cd/cassette/radio whatever let them crank the price with some really cheap speakers and funky looking but useless cabinets.
 
Not a boom box. A proper 3-disc-changer stereo. I didn't buy it, I just assume it ran my parents ~$150. Was like 5 years ago.
 
thats effectively a boom box. those things were cheap tat. even if the speakers were in separate boxes, you can only get so much for $150, especially after deducting the cost of radio/cd and whatever else. they toss the cheapest possible speakers into such stuff. you cannot compare that to a $150 pc speaker set.
 
even my HTPC headunit, (which uses discrete transistors and not STK packs for the more technical of you reading this post) which I admit is a low-end headunit, cost a lot more then the $100 I paid for it when it was new (I belive it went for ~$450-500) is barely good enough to be considered good sound. what you speak of is definitely what they say, a boom box.
 
Well, I can DEFINITELY hear the difference between my X-540s that I just got and my old stereo.

I don't think I know anyone with a proper home-theater setup to give a listen to, though, so that's probably going to be the limit of my audio experience 😛
 
heh just give it time, soon you'll notice your 5.25" subwoofer only puts out puffy booms instead of musical notes at low ranges😉 never mind the lack of midrange!
 
Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Well, I can DEFINITELY hear the difference between my X-540s that I just got and my old stereo.

I don't think I know anyone with a proper home-theater setup to give a listen to, though, so that's probably going to be the limit of my audio experience 😛
Click to expand...

i think its just because you've never been exposed to real nice speakers. with larger drivers more vibrant sounds be produced and i'm sure even your untrained ear will be able to tell the difference

i went from the logitech z-2300 to my M-Audio LX4 and it was pretty much night and day
the smallish drivers of the z2300 had NO MIDS AT ALL. all the logitech speakers had were boomy annoying bass and squeaky highs.

comparing that to my lx4's, the mids are much stronger and the highs and bass are more controlled.

i wish i had the money to get a receiver and some real bookshelf speakers
 
Yeah! Who the hell needs any speakers more than $100? Who needs an LCD monitor? Just get a 15" CRT! Who the hell needs fancy mice! The basic $9 one is fine! What the hell is wrong with you people? Diminishin returns!!!

You fancy video/accessory-philes!
 
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