What I learnt shopping for decent computer speakers | Hacker News Reader

What I learnt shopping for decent computer speakers

mybyways.com

59 pointsvitplister91 comments

These days I think the best route for high quality computer speakers are powered near field studio monitors. for example you can get a pair of JBL 305 powered monitors for $200 and they will blow the pants off “audiophile” computer speakers 4x the price.

Just need to sort out finding a sound card with trs outs (bonus is you get a physical volume knob and xlr mic inputs as well), another $50-100 or so.

I've gone analog out and it's always trouble. There's a hiss or a hum or a full-on ground loop. I enjoy optical spdif and think it should be more prevalent. The other possibility is USB-audio but then you have to deal with drivers.

Yeah, I was looking into a sound card for different reasons and the "modern" sound cards are all garbage. Terrible CODECs and OpAmps, combined with poor circuit design that drives them out-of-spec.

SPDIF out of the computer and into even a half-way decent DAC seems to be the way to go. Plus if you have more than one source you save money, since you only need to buy the DAC once.

I have a schiit dac and it has optical, spdif a and usb. Honestly it would be cool if it had two of each.

> then you have to deal with drivers.

I've been using USB DAC on Linux for years, always worked out of the box.

Quick question, does the DAC still work when connected to hdmi monitors? I keep having to fiddle with pulse audio at every login to get the headphone jack on my NUC to work.

Dunno, never connected it to HDMI.

I recently switched from pulse/alsa to Pipewire with the Pulse shim, working pretty well so far. I don't have any reason in particular to think that Pipewire would help, ... but sometimes changing random stuff solves the problem without needing to get into diagnosis.

Works fine for me. As in, I set it to usb audio and it keeps the setting after I restart the computer or resume from suspend. Sometimes I want HDMI audio and then I switch the output using the Gnome volume app and that works as well.

If it's a PulseAudio issue, it's very likely that you can change something in a config file somewhere to change the behaviour to whatever you want.

When I say sound card I’m talking about an “audio interface” which is indeed digitally connected via usb or similar (see focusrite, zoom, tascam, behringer for lower cost interfaces) and provides a balanced TRS output for a powered monitor.

Also have a look at “class compliant” audio interfaces. I haven't needed drivers in the better part of a decade, and most interfaces now are even compatible with iOS using a camera connection kit.

An audio interface (preferably external) + speakers that support balanced cables should eliminate group loops / hum.

Yeah, I'd steer far clear of anything labelled as a "computer" speaker. Studio monitors have long existed for that exact configuration. Plenty of inexpensive audio interfaces out there to connect the speakers to your computer.

My "computer" speakers are my Paradigm tower speakers attached to my A/V receiver.

I spent a lot of time on the topic earlier this year, and settled on a pair of KEF R3s, a combo DAC/headphone amp, and a power amp. It's by no means a budget or discrete setup, but it meets my needs for high quality audio in my "workplace" and, like an A/V receiver and towers, can be used elsewhere. ;)

I did this with a pair of Focal Alpha 65s (albeit ~2.5 as expensive as the JBLs, and larger too), but I am not sure I can ever go back to smaller computer speakers again. The sound is so so so much better.

I'm curious what you consider to be "audiophile" computer speakers. Amongst all the hi-fi communities I frequent, the JBL 305 are a common recommendation for entry-level speakers. In fact, I bought my gf exactly those when she started med school.

You can buy highend Hifi speakers from the 80s for very cheap (often under 100 bucks a pair), and they don't really degrade if they have elastic cones made out of rubber.

Speaker development didn't really evolve since then, what sounded transparent and lifelike back then still does today.

If you're in Europe, check online marketplaces for Canton GLE 60, 70 and 100 or Canton Quinto. They also have a high impedance, so low powered amps do fine.

>They also have a high impedance, so low powered amps do fine.

Did you mean that they have a low impedance?

Low wattage amps have high impedance. So you want high impedance speakers to match.

More wattage = lower impedance = expensive equipment.

The better answer is that the closer an amp's output impedance is to the speakers' impedance, the greater the variation in amplified frequency response. Because impedance varies depending on the frequency of the signal.

So an amp with high output impedance doesn't work well with low impedance speakers. But it's barely a problem nowadays for class AB amps; mostly only tube (which have other problems) and class D amps.

the lower resistance there is, the faster current and power naturally flow. You'd need an amp that expects that.

Strong disagree that it hasn't evolved; modern advances in materials and modeling mean drivers have wider ranges and lower distortion. Modern DSP can extend the low frequency response even further than just porting, and provide a crossover more tuned to the specific drivers used than is practical with analog components, or even correct for room modes. And we know way more about controlling off-axis dispersion than we did in the 80s.

Which especially means that small speakers can be way better than similar sized speakers were in the 80s, kinda relevant when you're using them for a computer. Though, maybe less true at $100.

Dsp isn't the amp, put the dsp on source into some old amp. Unless cone material has changed a lot then old speakers should be pretty similar, they even had cross overs and tuned porting...

The best thing is that they don't lose value. Can use them everyday for 5 years, and then sell them for same price (or higher).

https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers (No longer for sale)

I bought these for 40$ a few years ago and have them powered by a sony receiver and they handle anything I throw at them. I constantly have to turn them down for sake of my eardrums and work just fine for this layman. I do wonder if I'm missing out sometimes but I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear when they try to show me.

I doubt anyone is interested in my setup, but I have a harmony hub that coordinates my entire little set up. I have presets for my PS5, computer, nintendo switch, and turn table. I hit a preset and the hub will fire all the IR + bluetooth signals needed to power the TV and other necessary systems. All go through these little speakers and I get blown away every time.

Edit: A funny anecdote, but I bought these 40$ speakers and realized I needed an amp or receiver to use them. Ended up buying a sony receive for a few hundred open box. I then decided I was going to buy blue rays since I had such a nice video and audio set up but first I needed a blue ray player. Waited on the PS5 and bought that. 1000$ later, I finally can use my stupid 40$ speakers I got on sale. Now my PS5 can output HDR which I hear is divine and my current TV can't handle it. It just never stops does it? lol

“I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear”

Often they can’t, either, as blind listening tests show.

So is it mostly a scam like wine then? I just tune it to what sounds good and I'm off. I just managed to do it for 40$ lol

There's probably some price point below which there is a perceptible difference in quality, but, yes, a lot of it is a scam. At a minimum, you there's no guarantee of bang for buck above a certain fairly low price ceiling.

Not technically scams, obvious ones aside (ie, hundred bucks for a wooden knob or "directional" cables); audiophile gear is indeed top quality, but the excellence they aim to would never be recognizable by any human ear on the planet because the incredibly small improvements, if any, would be measurable only by lab instruments.

One can spend ten times less and still not hear any difference, but as any psychologist could confirm, once someone spends a fortune in something he believes it will sound better, he will surely hear that difference. Too bad nobody else will, unless they also fall in that trap.

What I like from higher end equipment is volume controls that don't have scratchy spots.

It's only a scam if you don't enjoy it.

That's actually a very fair take. Placebo isn't fake.

I used to think the same until I got my first set of 300$ headphones (QC 35). There is very real difference between those and any 30$ earbuds. You hear the music in a very different way.

The difference between $30 and $300 headphones is significant, but the difference between $300 and $3000 headphones is likely pretty small.

Probably, I haven't tried those myself tho.

Yes and No. There are so many preferred sounds out there that a $300 and a $3000 headphone are likely to be quite different, and you would expect the $3000 headphone to be technically better, but it comes down to preference. I have a $1000 pair of headphones, and they do just about everything really well, but I also have cheaper headphones that are more accurate (to different target curves, but that is getting into psychoacoustics), or more enjoyable for certain genres.

Price doesn't necessarily correspond to audio quality very well. For example, Ultrasone sells some objectively terrible headphones for $3000.

An audiophile would spend more than $25k on a pre-amp, amp, and two speakers. A single speaker cable might cost more than $1000. $300 headphones are vastly better than $30 pair. That is a difference an untrained ear can hear. However they don’t even scratch the surface of high-headphones much less something an audiophile would purchase. A pro level reference headphone might be in the range of 2 or 3k. Pros can hear the difference and properly identify characteristics. A 10k or 15k headphone? Many would conclude that the unbelievable pricing of some ultra expensive audio is snake oil because claims are subjective/unsubstantiated and the science behind them are flimsy or nonexistent.

My hearing is somewhat damaged from years of driving with the windows down. I can't hear any difference, so why bother paying for it.

You forgot the ones who get their direct electricity feed to get pure sine wave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJJy6VJvSCk

So because there is a real difference between two pieces of equipment, you no longer think that often audiophiles deceive themselves about differences among other pieces of equipment? I don’t understand the reasoning.

I can't name what I do hear. And there are A-B comparisons that I can't call the winner of but my wife can. I can't imagine reproducibly labeling various audio qualities with terms reminiscent of the "citrus notes" that wine people use. I can tell if I need external speakers instead of the monitor's internal speakers and I pretty much always do.

I will nod to your choice of using a reciever and "conventional" speakers. In addition, you can get amazing value on that stuff used.

Nobody wants, say, pre-HDMI AV recievers, so you can buy top-of-the-line units that sold for $1000 in 1995 for $30 today, and it's perfectly capable for 2-channel PC audio. Go back a few more years and you get into the domain of vintage 70s silver gear-- not so much cheap anymore, but a lot of of it has truly impressive build quality and servicability.

Same with the big old speakers which predate the "tiny satelites + subwoofer" designs. I think you could set up an empty Goodwill in a sealed enclosure, never let a person into it, and several sets of Fisher and Technics speakers with 12" or 15" woofers and $19.95 price tags would spontaneously generate.

I splurged a bit and got the Pioneer "Andrew Jones" floorstanding speakers (about USD250 per pair) like 5 or 6 years ago, and power them with a 1980 JVC A-X4 amplifier (about USD100 used, but I put about 75 more in rebuilding it) Since it's in a 10x15 room, you don't need a remote to change sources.

I never considered that, but I can totally see major discounts in pre-HD era equipment. Has there not been a lot of gains (like going from 420P to 4k) in the audio-side of things in that past 10 or 20 years? If not, can I use that same reasoning and buy some top shelf old speakers? I've always wanted to do it but I didn't want to be ripped off.

Uncompressed digital audio hit the limits of human perception around the turn of the century. The big things affecting people’s perceived quality were bad compression, noise due to things like poor shielding on low-end computers, or using something like Bluetooth where bandwidth constraints forced heavy compression. If you get a decent DAC (which isn’t a ton of money - USB devices are quite mature) a 20-30 year old system is going to sound great. Newer ones might be smaller or use less power but sound reproduction has been mature for many decades.

not too sure what you mean by uncompressed because digital audio is always lossy by its very nature

It's true due to sampling, but anyway nowadays all music source is digital so can't be a problem.

Sampling only limits the highest possible frequency, it doesn't quantize over time like a lot of people expect it to. Unless frequencies above 22khz are somehow an integral part of your listening experience you can use 44khz and suffer no ill effects.

Anyone talking about sampling and showing you a graph with stair steps is misleading. No DAC would be able to produce such a perfect stair step in the first place, let alone be tuned to do so on purpose.

All recordings have loss, nothing unique about digital in that regard. The point I was making was simply that once CD quality (16-bit, 44hz) became mainstream and only modestly more expensive hardware could get into 24-bit / 96khz range you were past the point where almost anyone – even trained “golden ears” listeners — could notice a difference from further improvements in that regard. Given real-world limits, the threshold was lower for most people.

The reason I mentioned compression is because you’d find people who’d say digital recordings didn’t sound good but misattributed why: the problem wasn’t digital, it was either low-quality codec implementations, constricted bit-rates[1], or technical flaws like the MP3 format’s inability to precisely handle sharp attack sounds like cymbals. If you did an A/B test with those, yes, people would notice a difference but the same was true of uncompressed audio or compression using newer codecs.

1. e.g. pre-VoLTE cell phone audio sounded terrible on most carriers unless you edited your phone’s settings to increase the bitrate, because the carriers were trying to fit more customers onto each cell tower. A little more bandwidth and it sounded much closer to landline calls.

There was no major change in the speaker itself for a long while - a top of the line speaker from the 80 is probably still good... if the material aged well. The elasticity of the membrane probably suffered more than anything else for example. That’s why modern speaker still cost a lot.

My take on this: Some advances, but nothing that noticeable for large or medium-sized home speakers, compared to other advances.

Related story: until not long ago I used some inherited 70s Kef HiFi speakers with a cheap modernish amp, and they sounded lovely, even against more modern equivalents (which I also had).

A mid-70s TV, though...

I’ve wondered about this for a while after hearing an impressive setup visiting someone’s house using mostly equipment from the 90s.

Are there any particular brands or models to look for?

Honestly, the short answer is to google model numbers and look at discussions on sites like Audiokarma.

The TLDR is that most Japanese "name brands you've heard of" from the 1970s are pretty good. After the mid 1980s, the build quality starts to nosedive. Top-of-range models are often still impressive, but more of the BOM cost ends up on things like decoding defunct Surround Sound formats and rear-channel amplification. This often corresponds with the change from silver-alumiuum faceplates to black plastic, and the expression "Black Plastic C*p".

Speakers are a lot more subjective and also more subject to material degredation-- the foam ring that attaches the speaker cones to the casing can go brittle or crack or fall apart. This can be fixed with rebuild kits for many models, but this is a situation where new kit has some benefits with improved materials science.

I went through the computer speaker setup options at the start of lockdown.

In the end I went with a reasonable well reviewed for price (cheap) front ported passive speakers Jamo S 803. Front ported as they sit close to a wall so front porting is supposed to stop the boomy sound. They are small enough to sit on a desk but slightly bigger than average computer speakers so get a fuller sound.

I then paired it with a SMSL SA300 class D amplifier. The thing is tiny, has bluetooth, aux in and usb dac. I connect using the inbuilt usb dac instead of aux in as noticed with my imac there was a very slight audible hum from computer noise on aux. As it's a class D amp it has low power draw.

For a small office home office (small spare bedroom) I find it a good setup. The stereo imaging is very good, it's like voices are right in front of you, the tiny amp is more than powerful enough for the small room (it's not a home cinema).

The setup worked out cheaper than a reasonable priced pair of active studio monitors. It seems better than most computer designed speakers I've listened to and again cheaper than the better computer designed speakers with usb dac built in.

Costco is selling a nice Klipsch set that I’ve been very happy with. It’s a 2.1 set, which is something OP didn’t want, but they also have a separate volume knob for the sub specifically so you can dial it back if you need to.

Does anyone have a mirror? The link is down.

Nothing against the OP, but I don't know how in 2021, websites can't handle a few dozen visitors at once. Even a $5 digital ocean machine can handle thousands simultaneously without going down.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

Getting to the front page of HN brings a lot more traffic than "a few dozen visitors at once".

https://nicklafferty.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-re-on-th...

https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p...

Per the screenshot in latter: 1571 page views per hour. That's 26 page views a minute, which is "a few dozen".

The screenshot is from the point the email was sent, not the point where the site went down.

18.000 visitors per day is 1 visitor every 5 seconds.

When you post stuff on HN, the visitors don't usually come in an orderly queue at the same rate for 24 hours. There is most likely a spike where most of the visitors open the site within a couple of hours, and then click around the other parts of the site. It can get pretty taxing pretty fast if you are serving for example images, and each page view triggers database queries.

We sometimes call his "the HN kiss of death", and we do this a lot to smaller visibility websites that never anticipate a few hundred/thousand hits within a couple of hours.

I usually go through the comments, then drop these URIs on my calendar and check them a couple of days later. By then the discussions have matured and the site is up and running (perhaps even the posts have been correct/enhanced with the HN comments).

Well, the OP isn't using such a thing. A quick lookup says it's hosted at internet-webhosting.com which appears to be a Malaysian web hosting outfit that sells the usual shared/vps/dedi hosting along with "wordpress hosting" which looks a lot like cPanel + Litespeed. Ho Hum.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201026180211/https://mybyways.... shows that it's built using Grav, which is fine I guess. I don't know how well that holds up to high traffic, but if he's not using any specific caching then I think just about anything could fall over in the face of the HN hug of death. And until one has been HN'd (or slashdotted) then they really don't think about such things most of the time. I know I didn't. Then, my WP site got slashdotted. It stayed online with some quick work, but that was almost a decade ago. I suspect that the OP is doing a similar scramble now.

I'm getting a "connection was reset" error. The hoster is most likely blocking all requests to the host name, probably due to an automatic DDoS detection (Wordpress is quite memory hungry) or because the included traffic has been exceeded.

Because some things don't even show up as a problem until you've encountered them before. I'm not sure about now, but Wordpress used to be nigh-unusable for a blog if you got any sort of notable traffic unless you you installed and configured a caching plugin. People that went through that generally did it from then on for any future blog they configured, but that doesn't mean some new blog from some new blogger would have it, or that someone wouldn't forget about it when setting up a new one.

The problem is that it's often not a slow degradation, it's an exponential one. Things will be going fine, and then things will look a little slower, and then things will completely fall apart. This is because the few parts that actual lock and cause contention stack, and problems beget more problems. See also virtual memory in servers. Often, that point at which your server needs virtual memory is the point at which it slows everything down more that more and more requests stack up (because virtual memory is slow), needing more memory, and you get a spiral of death in many cases.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210321221948/https://mybyways....

I waited until they were 50% off and bought a pair of JBL Professional 308P MKII for £149 a piece. Apparently they are the best speakers in the world under $1000 (a piece).

The Behringer Truths 2031A are still a great buy, although they're super heavy.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with a $3 stereo purchased from a garage sale stuffed under his desk. All the volume I want, and darn near free.

I use thrift store speakers for my home theater. The speakers were $20, the stereo to drive it $20 from the thrift store, the bluray player for $40 from the thrift store, the screen was $50 for the canvas from Amazon, another $50 for the lumber to make a frame. The only pricey thing was $300 for a projector from Amazon. A few more bucks for a ceiling bracket & cables. Lately I've been seeing projectors at the pawn shop for pretty cheap.

I'm very happy with it. It's HD, and 102 inches.

Oh the indecency!

One more vote for studio monitors.

Unless you already have an amp + speakers from 20 years ago like me. I believe they'll bury me with them.

The phrase, "too much bass for a small room" is an immediate clue that unlike most such reviews, there's a connection to reality here. Refreshing change.

I've seen consistently good talk of Dayton Audio gear for the last several years too, fwiw.

Agree, though as to the phrase I'd say this is a slight simplification / mis-diganosis of prominent room modes [1], which can be fixed somewhat.

[1] https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/listening-room-ac...

I went through this recently and wanted something great sounding but small, ended up with the Vanatoo T0. Great speakers but you pay for it ($500 CAD).

I gave up trying to find "computer speakers", I tried some "high grade" ones, but they were trash, even though expensive. A cheaper, and better setup for me, was to buy a Scarlett 2i4 USB Dac and a pair of PreSonus Eris E5 monitors, nice sound, can play very loud (given the size of the room), and gives some nice flexibility for doing stuff with sound and midi too.

Buy a pair of cheap studio monitors, and look for good reviews. I use a pair of Presonus Eris 3.5's and they work great for less than $100.

I've been using harman/kardon Onyx Mini for 4 years, same ones. they're amazing. Before that I was using only headphones.

I recently built a pair of Overnight Sensations and a Desktopsub with high level inputs. It was a joy, bjt the price of tools to start building was several times higher than that of the kits.

Harman-Kardon Sound Sticks do it for me. You can adjust the bass separately, which comes in handy. Not all rooms are created equal.

Few years ago I bought couple of KEF Q300 and Paradigm 12" sub on garage sale for peanuts. Works like a charm for me.

Does anyone still put soundblaster cards in their rigs these days?

USB-connected external audio DAC/AMP units are more common nowadays if you want to move beyond the onboard sound output. Theory is that moving the digital/analog conversion outside of your PC chassis achieves more in sound quality improvement (interference reduction) than a fancy internal card.

Any recommendations for a cheaper usb dac?

Edit: one that I could connect both headphones and speakers to and switch between each would be sweet.

If you’ve got active (powered) speakers then many headphone combo DACs have line-outs that will work well.

I personally have the ifi Zen dac and Fiio K5 pro, and recommend the Zen. The speakers and headphone outputs are always active, I just turn the speakers themselves on/off or mute to control which output I’m consuming.

If you need to power speakers then separate units are the way to go (DAC/Amp combo for the headphones and to PC, speaker amp chained to the line out on the dac). However units like the Loxjie A30 can do all three duties, it just may be a little weak on the headphone amplification side of things since it’s not the focus.

Note also if your pc/laptop has a toslink optical output you can alternatively use that to bridge to an external amp rather than using USB. Then your choice of dac/amp widens a bit to include units that don’t have USB inputs e.g. home theatre AV receivers and such.

Thanks for responding. I just ordered the Fiio K5 Pro though but both looked like good options. Excited to increase my audio quality after all of these year.

The k5 pro is excellent, and unlike the zen doesn't need a firmware flash to make it so. Enjoy!

It is excellent! Music is a lot clearer but now I am noticing that my headphones are a bit lacking in the bass department. Thanks for the recommendation.

I did recently as with on board audio I was not able to get low latency when toying with my midi keyboard. I looked at the prices and decided that SB with ASIO drivers would get me where I want to be cheaper than standalone USB audio interfaces. I did not get disappointed.

Most people go with USB DACs I imagine.

Edifer powered bookshelf speakers for me.

Me too. You’re done for like $100.

They get plenty loud, some audiophile reviews saying they sound “shockingly good” for what they are which means they’re more than good enough for me, don’t need to find and spend money on amps and DACs and whatever else.

Hundred bucks, plug them in the wall, problem solved. I’m not running a sound studio at my desk.

I actually have Edifier speakers for my TV and they are really ok. For the computer I use audioengine speakers, because they look great and I mean it's what I'm looking at all day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com